Adaptive rendezvous of multiple mobile agents with nonlinear dynamics and preserved network connectivity

Abstract

This paper investigates rendezvous of multiple nonlinear dynamical mobile agents with a virtual leader in a dynamic proximity network. It is assumed that only a fraction of agents in the group have access to the information on the position and velocity of the virtual leader. To avoid fragmentation, a bounded connectivity-preserving rendezvous algorithm is proposed for the multi-agent systems. Under the assumption that the initial network is connected, local adaptation strategies for the rendezvous algorithm are introduced that enable all agents to synchronize with the virtual leader even when only one agent is informed, without requiring any knowledge of the agent dynamics. Simulation results on an example are given to numerically verify the theoretical results. © 2011 Asian Control Association.