Flocking with multiple virtual leaders based on position measurements

Most existing flocking algorithms assume one single virtual leader and rely on information about both relative positions and relative velocities among neighboring agents. In this paper, we investigate the problem of controlling a flock of mobile autonomous agents to follow multiple virtual leaders using only position information in the sense that agents with the same virtual leader asymptotically attain the same velocity and track the corresponding virtual leader based only on position measurements. We propose a flocking algorithm, under which every agent asymptotically attains its desired velocity, collision between agents can be avoided, and the final tight formation minimizes all agents' global potentials. We show one simulation to verify and illustrate the theoretical results.