On the formation patterns in cyclic pursuit of double-integrator agents

The paper investigates the formation patterns for a group of double-integrator agents in cyclic pursuit. It is shown that under distributed position and velocity feedback control, the agents may experience rendezvous, elliptical, and spiral patterns depending on the distribution of roots. By introducing a rigidity term in the control strategy, a new class of epicyclic motions can be created. The epicyclic motions may be advantageous in target tracking and surveillance applications.