Rigidity and persistence for ensuring shape maintenance of multiagent meta formations (ext'd version)
Abstract
This paper treats the problem of the merging of 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0710.2659,
title = {Rigidity and persistence for ensuring shape maintenance of multiagent meta formations (ext'd version)},
author = {Julien M. Hendrickx and Changbin Yu and Baris Fidan and Brian D. O. Anderson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0710.2659},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
1 zip file containing 1 .tex files, and 39 .eps files. The paper (including the appendix) contains 13 Figures