Temperature Control of Energetic Swarms

In this paper, an M-member continuous-time energetic swarm problem is studied. A new swarm temperature variable is introduced to investigate the internal kinetic energy properties of the swarm. A controller is developed such that the swarm center can follow any desired trajectory with different corresponding swarm temperatures. The proposed control algorithm can be used effectively for multi-agent coverage path planning problem. It is shown that a better coverage can be achieved by increasing the temperature of a swarm. In addition, more insight into the problem of swarm cohesion is provided. Simulation is used to validate the results and to understand the basic properties of energetic swarm such as velocity distribution.