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Formation Specification for Control of Active Agents Using Artificial Potential Fields

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Abstract

The work presented in this paper presents a general method for formation shape specification and proves convergence for a class of parametrically defined formations with closed form, nearest-point solutions. In addition to a more general specification of formation shape, the method results in a system that is robust in the presence of a variable number of agents. Each agent observes the positions of its neighbors and independently constructs a formation curve about the center of its neighborhood. The attractive point on this formation curve is found by employing a local minimization with respect to the observed center of mass of an agent’s neighborhood rather than a fixed global field. Given a common objective or goal state, this approach results in a general method to drive a time varying number of agents into a desired geometric configuration without specific individual locational or structural pre-assignment. The application of LaSalle’s invariance principal to the system’s Hamiltonian shows stability and convergence of the flock to the desired configuration. Simulation results verify convergence and robustness to instantaneous changes in the number of agents.

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  1. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, 80918, USA

    Scott A. Harder & Leal K. Lauderbaugh

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  1. Scott A. Harder
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Correspondence to Scott A. Harder.

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Harder, S.A., Lauderbaugh, L.K. Formation Specification for Control of Active Agents Using Artificial Potential Fields. J Intell Robot Syst 95, 279–290 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-018-0912-7

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