Flocking of Multi-agent Dynamical Systems Based on Pseudo-leader Mechanism

Flocking behavior of multiple agents can be widely observed in nature such as schooling fish and flocking birds. Recent literature has proposed the possibility that flocking is possible even only a small fraction of agents are informed of the desired position and velocity. However, it is still a challenging problem to determine which agents should be informed or have the ability to detect the desired information. This paper aims to address this problem. By combining the ideas of virtual force and pseudo-leader mechanism, where a pseudo-leader represents an agent who can detect the desired information, we propose a scheme for choosing pseudo-leaders in a multi-agent group. The presented scheme can be applied to a multi-agent group even with an unconnected or switching neighbor graph. Experiments are given to show that the methods presented in this paper are of high accuracy and perform well.