How Much Control is Enough for Network Connectivity Preservation and Collision Avoidance?

For a multiagent system in free space, the agents are required to generate sufficiently large cohesive force for network connectivity preservation and sufficiently large repulsive force for collision avoidance. This paper gives an energy function based approach for estimating the control force in a general setting. In particular, the force estimated for network connectivity preservation and collision avoidance is separated from the force for other collective behavior of the agents. Moreover, the estimation approach is applied in three typical collective control scenarios including swarming, flocking, and flocking without velocity measurement.