Fast Convergent Flocking Control of Multi-Agent Systems with Switching Communication Topology

To improve the flocking convergence speed for completing some emergent tasks, e.g. search and rescue in an accident, this paper proposes a novel fast convergent flocking control method for multi-agent systems with switching communication topology. First, a new distributed per-step convergence factor (D-PCF) is defined to indicate flocking convergence speed of each agent, whose summation indicates the overall convergence speed of multi-agent systems. Then, to decrease the D-PCF and thus increase the flocking convergence speed of the overall multi-agent system, a new distributed fast synchronization (DFS) algorithm is developed to determine position-dependent and velocity-dependent adjacency weights on every communication channel of an ad hoc network with switching topologies. The simulation results show that compared with a conventional flocking control, the flocking control using the DFS algorithm with switching communication topology can significantly increase the flocking convergence speed without requiring larger control inputs.