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Virtual-leader Split/Rejoin-based Flocking Control With Obstacle Avoidance for Multi-agents

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Abstract

In the research of flocking control algorithm with obstacle avoidance, the constraints of obstacle information, shape and boundary limit their practical applications. To relax these constraints, we assume that the agent can only perceive the position of static obstacle boundary points within its sensing radius, and propose a virtual-leader split/rejoin-based flocking control algorithm with obstacle avoidance. In this algorithm, the virtual-leader is divided into target virtual-leader and bypass virtual-leader, the bypass virtual-leader is designed to lead the agent to move along the boundary of static obstacles, and the target virtual-leader is designed to lead multi-agents split by static obstacles perturbation to re-aggregate and realize the group objective following. Additionally, the position cooperation term is designed to realize the separation and aggregation between agents and between the agent and static obstacle boundary points, and the velocity consensus term is designed to realize velocity matching. Then, the sufficient conditions that the agent does not collide are demonstrated. Finally, it is further verified by simulations that the proposed algorithm can relax the constraints of obstacle shape and boundary, and achieve better environmental adaptability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, 541004, China

    Jianhui Wu, Yuanfa Ji, Xiyan Sun & Weibin Liang

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  1. Jianhui Wu
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  2. Yuanfa Ji
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Correspondence to Yuanfa Ji.

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The authors declare that there is no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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This work is supposed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62161007 and 62061010), Foundation from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (AA20302022, AB21196041, AB22035074 and AD22080061), Guangxi Key Laboratory of Precision Navigation Technology and Application (DH202207 and DH202215), and Young Teachers Promotion Project of Guangxi Universities (2022KY0181).

Jianhui Wu received his Ph.D. degree in traffic information engineering and control from Changsha University of Science and Technology, China in 2019. His research interests include satellite navigation, system control, and system optimization.

Yuanfa Ji received his Ph.D. degree in astronomical technology and methods from National Astronomical Observatories, CAS, China in 2008. His research interests include satellite navigation, signal processing, and system control.

Xiyan Sun received her Ph.D. degree in astronomical technology and methods from National Astronomical Observatories, CAS, China in 2006. Her research interests include satellite navigation, signal processing, and system control.

Weibin Liang received his M.E. degree in electronics and communication engineering from Guilin University of Electronic Technology, China in 2020. His research interests include satellite navigation, visual navigation, signal processing, and system control.

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Wu, J., Ji, Y., Sun, X. et al. Virtual-leader Split/Rejoin-based Flocking Control With Obstacle Avoidance for Multi-agents. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-022-0950-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-022-0950-6

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