Rigidity and persistence for ensuring shape maintenance of multi-agent meta-formations

Julien M. Hendrickx*, Changbin Yu, Baris Fidan, Brian D.O. Anderson

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    15 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper treats the problem of merging formations, where the underlying model of a formation is graphical. We first analyze the rigidity and persistence of meta-formations, which are formations obtained by connecting several rigid or persistent formations. Persistence is a generalization to directed graphs of the undirected notion of rigidity. In the context of moving autonomous agent formations, persistence characterizes the efficacy of a directed structure of unilateral distance constraints seeking to preserve a formation shape. We derive then, for agents evolving in a two- or three-dimensional space, the conditions under which a set of persistent formations can be merged into a persistent meta-formation, and give the minimal number of interconnections needed for such a merging. We also give conditions for a meta-formation obtained by merging several persistent formations to be persistent.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)131-143
    Number of pages13
    JournalAsian Journal of Control
    Volume10
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2008

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