Circle formation control of mobile agents with limited interaction range

The circle formation problem for a group of mobile agents with limited interaction range is addressed in this paper. Distributed switching control laws are developed for multiagent systems to form prescribed formations from any initial configurations on a circle. It is shown that the desired circle formation can be achieved if a parameter depending on the agents' interaction range is larger than the prescribed angular distance from each agent to its immediate counterclockwise agent. When the agents' interaction range is not sufficiently large, the formation error of each agent converges to a limit, and an upper bound and a lower bound on the limit value are provided. It is also shown that under the proposed control laws, the mobile agents' spatial order on the circle is always preserved and thus collision between mobile agents is avoided.