Swarm Aggregation Without Communication and Global Positioning

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a novel decentralized controller for the aggregation of a swarm of unicycle agents in the absence of communication and exchange of global positions. The methodology implicitly facilitates tasks like obstacle avoidance and path-following, whereas the agents exercise local decision-making. The primary aim of this letter is to form stable aggregates of a swarm using only local sensing and no inter-agent communication. A theoretical analysis of the proposed algorithm is presented based on the theory of switched systems, establishing asymptotic stability of the formed aggregates. Simulation experiments are presented to show the stability of aggregates in the presence of large, extended obstacles and external disturbances. Furthermore, we demonstrate an implementation of the proposed controller on a real system using experiments on a swarm of differential drive microbots. The proposed technique without communication demonstrates similar performance when compared with existing swarm aggregation techniques using global and local communications.