Stability analysis of stochastically varying formations of dynamic agents

Abstract

We analyze a network of dynamic agents where the topology of the network specifies the information flow between the agents. We present an analysis method for such a system for both consensus and formation stabilization problems. To consider the general features introduced by the information flow topology, we consider the case of agent dynamics being a single integrator. Then we show that the method of analysis can be extended to more general cases of complicated agent dynamics, non-ideal links for information flow, etc. We also consider the case when the topology of the network is changing over time. The focus of the paper is on obtaining conditions for the stability of the formation that can be checked in a decentralized way.