Brief paper - Bounded control for preserving connectivity of multi-agent systems using the constraint function approach

In multi-agent control systems, coordination of agents often relies critically on the connectivity of the underlying communication network. This study analyses the problem of preserving connectivity with bounded control inputs for multi-agent systems. Firstly, a general potential-based control framework is investigated and sufficient conditions for achieving rendezvous while preserving connectivity are presented. Then, based on the modification of the potential-based control, a novel bounded control law with very mild design requirements is proposed and the issues of preserving connectivity, the agent group rendezvous, and the input bound of the controller are discussed. The effectiveness of the proposed control law and the boundedness of the inputs are illustrated by numerical examples.