Flocking Control of a Group of Agents Using a Fuzzy-Logic-Based Attractive/Repulsive Function

In this study, a novel procedure is presented for control and analysis of a group of autonomous agents with point mass dynamics achieving flocking motion by using a fuzzy-logic-based attractive/repulsive function. Two cooperative control laws are proposed for a group of autonomous agents to achieve flocking formations related to two different centers (mass center and geometric center) of the flock. The first one is designed for flocking motion guided at mass center and the other for geometric center. A virtual agent is introduced to represent a group objective for tracking purposes. Smooth graph Laplacian is introduced to overcome the difficulties in theoretical analysis. A new fuzzy-logic-based attractive/repulsive function is proposed for separation and cohesion control among agents. The theoretical results are presented to indicate the stability (separation, collision avoidance and velocity matching) of the control systems. Finally, simulation example is demonstrated to validate the theoretical results.