Flocking behavior with multiple leaders and global trajectory

Aiming at the group of autonomous agents consisting of multiple leader agents and multiple follower ones, a flocking behavior method with multiple leaders and a global trajectory was proposed. In this flocking method, the group leaders can attain the information of the global trajectory, while each follower can communicate with its neighbors and corresponding leader but does not have global knowledge. Being to a distributed control method, the proposed method firstly sets a movable imaginary point on the global trajectory to ensure that the center and average velocity of the leader agents satisfy the constraints of the global trajectory. Secondly, a two-stage strategy was proposed to make the whole group satisfy the constraints of the global trajectory. Moreover, the distance between the center of the group and the desired trajectory was analyzed in detail according to the number ratio of the followers to the leaders. In this way, on one hand, the agents of the group emerge a basic flocking behavior; on the other hand, the center of the group satisfies the constraints of global trajectory. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.