Multi-agent deployment based on homogenous maps and a special inter-agent communication protocol

In this paper, presented is a methodology for formation control of an n-D multi agent system (MAS). The n-D motion of the MAS is treated as n one-D motions with the evolution of each coordinate of an agent representing the collective motion of a continuum of agents constrained to always stay on a straight line. The motion of the continuum is controlled by the two vertex agents, left most and the right most, by preserving certain distance ratios among the agents. First, it is shown how a specific homogenous map defining a desired agent topology may be achieved by local inter-agent communication. Second, a strategy for deploying agents to lie on a desired curve utilizing local inter-agent communication and starting from a randomly distributed initial topology is outlined.