Title :
Multi-agent rendezvousing with a finite set of candidate rendezvous points
Author :
Fang, J. ; Morse, A.S. ; Cao, M.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Yale Univ., New Haven, CT
Abstract :
The discrete multi-agent rendezvous problem we consider in this paper is concerned with a specified set of points in the plane, called "dwell-points," and a set of mobile autonomous agents with limited sensing range. Each agent is initially positioned at some dwell-point, and is able to determine its distances to dwell-points within sensing range, and also the bearings of those dwell-points with respect to a local reference of the agent. An agent can also determine if each dwell-point within sensing range is occupied by at least one agent. We do not, however, assume that an agent can count the number of agents occupying a dwell-point. We say the agents have "rendezvoused" if all the agents have moved to a set of dwell-points all within sensing radius of each other. The goal is to devise distributed motion strategies for each agent which will cause all the agents to rendezvous in the sense just defined, without any active communication among the agents. We propose a distributed motion rule and use graphs to characterize a class of dwell-points in the plane for which rendezvous is guaranteed under the rule.
Keywords :
discrete event systems; distributed control; mobile agents; multi-agent systems; multivariable control systems; distributed motion strategies; dwell-points; mobile autonomous agents; multi-agent rendezvousing; sensing range; Autonomous agents; Centralized control; Communication system control; Control systems; Distributed algorithms; Multiagent systems; Vehicles;
Conference_Titel :
American Control Conference, 2008
Conference_Location :
Seattle, WA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2078-0
Electronic_ISBN :
0743-1619
DOI :
10.1109/ACC.2008.4586585