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Potential-function-based shape formation in swarm simulation

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Abstract

This paper presents a potential-function-based formation shape control scheme for swarm simulation. The potential function is designed to avoid collision among agents, approach a destination, and achieve a certain shape formation around the destination. The agents move in a swarm to the formation position, which is generated from a reference point and the neighboring agents. In the framework, a local minimum case created by combining the potential repulsed from neighboring robots and that attracted from a reference point is presented; herein, a robot escapes from a local minimum using a virtual escape point after recognizing the trapped situation. Similarly, in the proposed framework, for a well-equipped formation shape, potential functions are designed to maintain the same relative distance between neighboring robots on a formation line, which also satisfies scalability for the number of agents. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can effectively construct elliptical, diamond, and heart-shaped formations for swarm agents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Advanced Engineering, Kyungnam University, Changwon-si, Kyungnam, 631-701, South Korea

    Hahmin Jung

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Kyungnam University, Changwon-si, Kyungnam, 631-701, South Korea

    Dong Hun Kim

Authors
  1. Hahmin Jung
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  2. Dong Hun Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dong Hun Kim.

Additional information

Recommended by Associate Editor Yingmin Jia under the direction of Editor Hyouk Ryeol Choi.

This work was supported by Kyungnam University Research Fund, 2013.

Hahmin Jung received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Division of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Advanced Engineering, Kyungnam University, Korea, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Advanced Engineering from Kyungnam University. His research interests include swarm robots, localization, and behavior algorithms.

Dong Hun Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University, Korea, in 1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2003, he was a research associate under several grants in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, NC, USA. In 2003, he joined Boston University, MA, USA, as a visiting assistant professor under several grants at the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. In 2004, he was engaged in post-doctoral research at the School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Japan. Since 2005, he has been an associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kyungnam University, Korea. His research interests include swarm intelligence, self-organization of swarm systems, mobile robot path planning, decentralized control of autonomous vehicles, intelligent control, and adaptive nonlinear control.

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Jung, H., Kim, D.H. Potential-function-based shape formation in swarm simulation. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 12, 442–449 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-013-0133-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-013-0133-6

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