Bearing-compass formation control: A human-swarm interaction perspective

The paper considers the distributed formation control problem given bearing-only sensing of nearby agents with respect to a global vector frame, provided by a compass. We propose a bearing-compass control law and prove its convergence to a formation that is unique up to translation and scaling. We present results that describe the formation´s evolution in terms useful to a human operator, focusing on scale, translation and rotation of the formation. The results are supported with a number of illustrative examples.