Decentralized Policies for Geometric Pattern Formation and Path Coverage

Abstract

This paper presents a decentralized control policy for symmetric formations in multiagent systems. It is shown that n agents, each one pursuing its leading neighbor along the line of sight rotated by a common offset angle α, eventually converge to a single point, a circle or a logarithmic spiral pattern, depending on the value of α. In the final part of the paper, we present a strategy to make the agents totally anonymous, and we discuss a potential application to coverage path planning.