Stable flocking of multiple agents based on molecular potential field and distributed receding horizon control

A novel distributed control scheme to generate stable flocking motion for a group of agents is proposed. In this control scheme, a molecular potential field model is applied as the potential field function because of its smoothness and unique shape. The approach of distributed receding horizon control is adopted to drive each agent to find its optimal control input to lower its potential at every step. Experimental results show that this proposed control scheme can ensure that all agents eventually converge to a stable flocking formation with a common velocity and the collisions can also be avoided at the same time.