Plug-and-Play Cooperative Navigation: From Single-Agent Navigation Fields to Graph-Maintaining Distributed MAS Controllers

A class of closed-form distributed controllers achieving leader-following in a multi-agent system (MAS) with distance-limited communications in a compact obstructed environment is developed: given a user-provided navigation field for a single point agent as an input, the desired MAS PnP (“Plug-and-Play”) controller is obtained through a closed-form expression. In particular, cooperative navigation of an environment of arbitrary complexity is achievable whenever an adequate single-agent navigation solution is available. Sufficient conditions on the navigation field in relation to the communication radius are developed, guaranteeing that a prescribed initial graph of agents retains all of its edges while following a leader. In contrast with existing work, the standard radial symmetric interactions among agents are replaced with an asymmetrically rescaled version of the provided navigation field, removing the need for assumptions such as the sphericity or convexity of obstacles, and enabling the switching of the attractive interactions between neighbors on and off as needed. This approach elucidates the trade-offs between communication range, the size of the MAS, the control effort required for cooperation, and the complexity of navigating in the provided environment. The reliance of the approach on navigation fields enables the use of state-of-the-art sensing-based reactive navigation methods designed for settings with incomplete prior knowledge of the environment and based on a sphere-world model layer. For this reason, two case studies are provided—one of sphere worlds, and the other of topological sphere worlds with star-convex obstacles—comparing different variations of the PnP controller derived from state-of-the-art single-agent navigation fields.