Leader-Follower Density Control of Multi-Agent Systems with Interacting Followers: Feasibility and Convergence Analysis

TL;DR

This paper develops a macroscopic density control framework for large-scale multi-agent leader-follower systems with follower interactions, providing feasibility conditions, stability guarantees, and validation through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control approach accounting for follower interactions, deriving feasibility conditions and stability analysis for density steering.

Findings

Identified sharp feasibility thresholds and phase transitions.

Derived necessary and sufficient conditions linking target distribution to system parameters.

Validated theoretical results with numerical and agent-based simulations.

Abstract

We address density control problems for large-scale multi-agent systems in leader-follower settings, where a group of controllable leaders must steer a population of followers toward a desired spatial distribution. Unlike prior work, we explicitly account for follower-follower interactions, capturing realistic behaviors such as flocking and collision avoidance. Within a macroscopic framework based on partial differential equations governing the density dynamics, we derive (i) necessary and sufficient feasibility conditions linking the target distribution to interaction strength, diffusion, and leader mass, and (ii) a feedback control law guaranteeing local stability with an explicit estimate of the basin of attraction. Our analysis reveals sharp feasibility thresholds, phase transitions beyond which no control effort can achieve the desired configuration. Numerical simulations in one- and two-dimensional domains validate the theoretical results at the macroscopic level, and agent-based simulations on finite populations confirm the practical deployability of the proposed framework.