Station Keeping through Beacon-referenced Cyclic Pursuit

TL;DR

This paper explores a modified cyclic pursuit strategy where agents orbit a beacon, establishing stable circling formations with controllable radius and separation, demonstrated through theoretical analysis and robot experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a beacon-referenced cyclic pursuit method that achieves stable collective circling with adjustable parameters, extending traditional pursuit models.

Findings

Stable shape equilibria are achieved in a 2-agent system.

The circling behavior is demonstrated on real mobile robots.

Parameters effectively control circling radius and agent separation.

Abstract

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.