Station Keeping through Beacon-referenced Cyclic Pursuit
This addresses station keeping for multi-agent systems like robots, but it is incremental as it builds on existing cyclic pursuit methods with a beacon modification.
The paper tackles the problem of multi-agent station keeping by modifying cyclic constant bearing pursuit to include a beacon reference, achieving stable collective circling around the beacon with parameters controlling radius and angular separation. Results were demonstrated on mobile robots using motion capture, showing stability for a 2-agent system.
This paper investigates a modification of cyclic constant bearing (CB) pursuit in a multi-agent system in which each agent pays attention to a neighbor and a beacon. The problem admits shape equilibria with collective circling about the beacon, with the circling radius and angular separation of agents determined by choice of parameters in the feedback law. Stability of circling shape equilibria is shown for a 2-agent system, and the results are demonstrated on a collective of mobile robots tracked by a motion capture system.