Flocking with obstacle avoidance and connectivity maintenance in multi-agent systems

The problems of flocking with both connectivity maintenance and obstacle avoidance for the network of dynamic agents are addressed. In the case where the initial network is connected, a set of decentralized flocking control protocols is presented by utilizing artificial potential functions combined with stream functions to enable the group to asymptotically achieve the desired stable flocking motion, which could not only maintain the network connectivity of the dynamic multi-agent systems for all time but also make all the agents avoid obstacles smoothly without trapping into local minima. Finally, nontrivial simulations and experiments are worked out to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical methods.