Decentralised control for formation reorganisation of multi-agent systems using a virtual leader

In this article, we study the topology reorganisation of formations for multi-agent systems with a broken agent during motion. The cases with a broken agent in different topologies and different positions are studied, and a decentralised algorithm is proposed to reorganise the different damaged topologies of formations. The main contributions of this article include: first, a collective potential function model is designed to reorganise the topologies, and a repulsive potential function model is proposed to avoid obstacles; second, a decentralised algorithm based on potential functions is presented; third, a virtual agent is designed to be a leader as soon as an agent is damaged, and disappears once the topology is repaired. Finally, some simulation results are studied to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.