COME TOGETHER: Multi-Agent Geometric Consensus (Gathering, Rendezvous, Clustering, Aggregation)

This report surveys results on distributed systems comprising mobile agents that are identical and anonymous, oblivious and interact solely by adjusting their motion according to the relative location of their neighbours. The agents are assumed capable of sensing the presence of other agents within a given sensing range and able to implement rules of motion based on full or partial information on the geometric constellation of their neighbouring agents. Eight different problems that cover assumptions of finite vs infinite sensing range, direction and distance vs direction only sensing and discrete vs continuous motion, are analyzed in the context of geometric consensus, clustering or gathering tasks.Comment: 85 pages surve

On Cyclic and Nearly Cyclic Multiagent Interactions in the Plane

We discuss certain types of cyclic and nearly cyclic interactions among N “point”agents in the plane, leading to formations of interesting limiting geometric configurations. Cyclic pursuit and local averaging interactions have been analyzed in the context of multi-agent gathering. In this paper, we consider some nearly cyclic interactions that break symmetry leading to factor circulants rather than circulant interaction matrices.