Coordinated collective motion of groups of autonomous mobile robots with directed interconnected topology

Coordinated collective motion of groups of autonomous mobile robots is studied. A qualitative analysis for the collective dynamics of multiple autonomous robots with directed interconnected topology using nearest neighbor rules is given. A necessary and sufficient graphical condition is proposed to guarantee that the headings of all robots converge to the same heading. The graph having a globally reachable node plays a crucial role in convergence analysis. Furthermore, we show that the globally reachable node having no neighbors serves as a group leader as a special case.