Graph Matching-Based Formation Reconfiguration of Networked Agents With Connectivity Maintenance

摘要

Various applications require networked agents to cooperatively achieve specified formations. In this paper, formation reconfiguration for a group of identical agents with limited communication capabilities is considered. Since the considered agents are identical, their roles are interchangeable, and each position in the desired formation can be taken by any agent. To reduce the total amount of node movement required for formation reconfiguration, a weighted graph-matching-based node-mapping strategy is developed to specify the node correspondence between an arbitrary initial graph and the desired graph. After the node mapping is determined, agents are required to move physically to form the desired formation. Since agents are only able to communicate within a certain range, formation reconfiguration must be accomplished with network connectivity constraints (i.e., specified nodes remain within specified sensing and communication ranges). A decentralized control scheme is developed to guarantee network connectivity by maintaining a desired neighborhood determined by the node-mapping algorithm, and to ensure convergence of all agents to the desired configuration with collision avoidance among agents. The developed strategy is demonstrated through simulation results.