SICE Journal of Control, Measurement, and System

Integration

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Network weight and time-varying potential

function for obstacle avoidance of swarm robots
in column formation

Shotaro Shibahara, Takuma Wakasa & Kenji Sawada

To cite this article: Shotaro Shibahara, Takuma Wakasa & Kenji Sawada (2022) Network
weight and time-varying potential function for obstacle avoidance of swarm robots in column
formation, SICE Journal of Control, Measurement, and System Integration, 15:1, 24-35, DOI:
10.1080/18824889.2022.2032542

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/18824889.2022.2032542

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa Published online: 18 Feb 2022.

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SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION
2022, VOL. 15, NO. 1, 24–35
https://doi.org/10.1080/18824889.2022.2032542

Network weight and time-varying potential function for obstacle avoidance of

swarm robots in column formation
Shotaro Shibahara, Takuma Wakasa and Kenji Sawada
The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper proposes network weight functions and time-varying potential functions for obstacle Received 26 October 2021
avoidance of swarm robots in column formation. We consider a potential function whose expo- Revised 12 January 2022
nent is the distance between the robots and the obstacle for obstacle avoidance. When a robot Accepted 15 January 2022
tries to avoid an obstacle while staying in a formation, it behaves oscillatory due to the imbalance KEYWORDS
between the attraction of staying in the formation and the repulsion of avoiding the obstacle. In Multi-agent system; network
addition, swarm robots may become stagnant in front of large obstacles. To solve these prob- structure; formation control;
lems, we propose two methods. The first method is to weaken the strength of the connection obstacle avoidance; potential
between robots according to their relative distance. The second method is to change the shape function
of the potential function depending on the relative angle between the robot and the obstacle.
Numerical examples show that these methods reduce the oscillatory of the robot and alleviate
the stagnation in front of the obstacle.

1. Introduction
A multi-agent system (MAS) allows multiple agents to
share information with each other, so that the agents
as a whole can efficiently accomplish tasks that would
be difficult to accomplish independently [1, 2]. There
has been a growing motivation to control large swarm
robots of more than several thousand units [3, 4]. One
of the important problems is obstacle avoidance while
swarm robots stay in the desired formation [5]. Typical
methods of obstacle avoidance include potential func-
tions [6, 7] and model predictive control [8]. Poten-
tial function methods realize the collision avoidance
by using the repulsion force that increases with the
distance between the robot and the obstacle. In this
case, the robot near the obstacle may show oscillatory
behaviour. This is caused by the fact that the control
inputs for staying formation and avoiding obstacles
in opposite directions. In the previous study of the
current authors [9], the imbalance between the two
control inputs is alleviated by lowering the priority of
the formation control. However, the number of robots
assumed in [9] is much smaller than that in [1, 2]. This
paper considers the case where the number of robots is
significantly increased from the number set in [9].
In this paper, we propose a method of changing the
potential function for obstacle avoidance in addition to
the formation control for the column formation prob-
lem [10]. The objective of this paper is to reduce the
oscillatory behaviour near obstacles and to recover and
preserve the formation after the avoidance of obstacles.
Two issues are raised in this paper. The first issue is
to alleviate the imbalance between the attractive force
for staying the formation and the repulsive force for
avoiding obstacles. The second issue is to eliminate the
stagnation of the swarm robots in front of the large
obstacle.
To address the first issue, this paper proposes a net-
work weight function that changes the gravitational pull
for staying the formation between robots based on the
positions of the robots and obstacles. Swarm robots in
formation are forced to break the desired formation
to avoid obstacles. The larger the difference between
the actual distance between robots and the desired dis-
tance, the larger the gravitational pull of the forma-
tion control. The previous study [9] proposes a weight
function that weakens the attraction to stay in the for-
mation as the distance between robots becomes larger
than the desired distance. However, when the robots are
close to each other, the force to stay the formation also
increases, which causes oscillation. In other words, the
force imbalance between the robots in preserving the
formation causes the oscillation. To address this issue,
we propose a weight function that weakens the forma-
tion control according to the displacement between the
distance between robots and the desired distance. This
network weight prevents the formation control from
becoming too large even when the robots are close to
each other.
To address the second issue, we set a relative angle
based on the positional relationship between the robot

CONTACT Shotaro Shibahara s-shibahara@uec.ac.jp

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 25

and the obstacle and introduce a weight parameter adjacent matrix A = [aij ] ∈ Rn×n is defined as follows:
to change the repulsion force of obstacle avoidance. 
The stagnation in front of the large obstacle causes a 1 if (j, i) ∈ E and i = j
aij = . (1)
misalignment in the positional relationship between 0 otherwise
the robots and may make it impossible to stay in the
desired formation after avoiding obstacles. This reason The neighbourhood of agent i is the set of agent
is thought to be that the potential function for obsta- j(= i) to which agent i is adjacent. The number of edges
cle avoidance is a circularly spreading function. Refer- entering vertex i is called the input degree diin and given
ence [11] adds weights depending on the relative angle by
between the robot and the obstacle to the circularly 
n
spreading potential function. The resultant range of the diin = aij , i = 1, 2, . . . n.
influence of the repulsion force changes from circularly j=1
spreading one to teardrop one and smooth obstacle The degree matrix D of graph G with the diagonal
avoidance is achieved. Motivated by this method, we element of d1in , d2in , . . . , dnin is defined as follows:
propose a new weight that changes the shape of the  
potential function depending on the relative angle and D = diag d1in , d2in , . . . , dnin .
construct a time-varying repulsive potential function.
From D and A, the Graph Laplacian is given by
By changing the shape of the potential function to an
ellipse instead of a circle, swarm robots do not stagnate L = D − A.
in front of the large obstacle and can stay in the desired
formation after passing through. Also, Perron matrix with some positive number
The conference version of this paper [9] only con- ε(0 < ε < 1) is defined as follows:
siders the design of the network weight function against P = I − εL
the first issue. The function of this paper is a generalized
form of [9]. Also, the second issue is not considered in where I is the identity matrix.
[9]. The time varying repulsive force for swam robots is A weighted graph is a graph in which each edge has a
the contribution of this paper compared with [11]. The positive real number (weight). The weight graph is rep-
number of robots to which the proposed method can resented by (G, w) where ω : E → R+ \{0} is a weight
be applied is comparable to those in [3, 4]. This paper function. Also, the adjacency matrix A of the weighted
suppresses the oscillatory behaviour of a large number graph (G, w) is defined as follows:
of robots, which has not been solved in [9]. 
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 ω((j, i)) if (j, i) ∈ E and i = j
aij = .
explains consensus control of MAS. Section 3 describes 0 otherwise
the problem setting of the obstacle avoidance for swarm
robots in column formation. Section 4 describes two 2.2. Consensus control
proposed methods: a method for setting the network
weight function and a method for designing a time- Consider the case that agent i(= 1, 2, . . . , n) is given by
varying potential function. In Section 5, numerical an integral system in discrete-time domain as follows:
experiments are conducted using MATLAB, and the
xi [k + 1] = xi [k] + ui [k].
summary of this paper is given in Section 6.
The control input of agent i considering the offset d
is given by
2. Preliminaries

n
 
This section explains the distributed optimization of ui [k] = −ε aij xi [k] − xj [k] − d . (2)
MAS [12–15] which is the basis of the proposed j=1
method.
We transform Equation (2) as follows:

n
 
2.1. Graph theory ui [k] = −ε aij xi [k] − xj [k] − d
j=1
The network structure for information transfer bet
ween agents is represented by graph G = (V, E) com- 
n
 
= −ε aij xi [k] − xj [k] + bi (3)
posed of the vertex set V = {1, 2, . . . , n} and the edge j=1
set E ⊆ V × V. The edge (i, j) ∈ E indicates an infor- 
mation transfer path from agent i to agent j, that is, where bi = εd nj=1 aij . Equation (3) is a consensus
agent i ∈ V is adjacent to agent j ∈ V. If all the paths are control with bias, so bi has no effect on the stability anal-
bi-directional, then G is called an undirected graph. An ysis [12]. In Equation (3), we set bi = 0. Summarizing
26 S. SHIBAHARA ET AL.

the agents and the inputs, the state-space equation of 3. Problem setting
consensus control is represented by
This paper considers a column formation problem in
x[k + 1] = Px[k]. (4) which N(= m × n) swarm robots move straight ahead
and avoid collisions on the x−y plane with c obstacles.
Since the Perron matrix P has eigenvalue 1, we get The network structure between the robots is an undi-
rected and connected graph as shown Figure 1. The
P1n = 1n . shapes of each robot and obstacle are circulars of radius
r and R, respectively, and their position coordinates are
Let k → ∞ in Equation (4), we get
their centres.
1 Let Ni be the neighbourhood set of robot i. When
lim x[k + 1] = 1n 1Tn x0 ,
k→∞ n the direction of the swarm robots is the positive direc-
tion of the x-axis, the other robots networked to
1
n
lim xi [k + 1] = x0j . the right, left, front and back of robot i are defined
k→∞ n j=1 as Ri , Li , Fi , Bi ∈ Ni (Ni = {Ri , Li , Fi , Bi }) as shown in
Figure 2.
This system proves that all agents achieve the average We assume a leaderless formation. In addition, each
consensus. robot obtains information about its surrounding envi-
ronment from sensors whose detection range is radius
2.3. Distributed optimization ρ(> 0). The adjacency matrix A = [aij ] ∈ Rn×n rep-
resenting the inter-robot connections is defined as fol-
Consider the unconstrained optimization problem: lows:
 
min Ji (ξ ) (5) 1 if pij ≤ ρ
ξ ∈R N aij = , j ∈ Ni (7)
i∈V 0 otherwise
where the cost function Ji (ξ ) is a real-valued func- where pij is the distance between robot i and robot j.
tion defined in RN and convex. The sub-gradient of This paper aims to make each robot follow the target
differentiable Ji (ξ ) is as follows: coordinates xg ∈ R while avoiding obstacles under the
∂Ji formation movement problem. For straight-line move-
dJi (ξ̄ ) = (ξ̄ ). ment of the column formation, xg is set far enough
∂ξ
away. In the y-direction, each robot only stays the
By using the consensus control of Section 2.2, the desired distance d ∈ R from its neighbouring robots.
system equation for solving Equation (5) is defined as Let the set of robots be V = {1, 2, . . . , n}. The dynamics
follows: of robot i ∈ V at discrete time k ∈ N is given by

xi [k + 1] = pij xj [k] − s[k]dJi (xi [k]) pi [k + 1] = pi [k] + ui [k],
j∈V T
pi [k] = pix [k] piy [k] (8)
where pij is an element of the Perron matrix P.
In this paper, we assume that the step width is a where pi [k] ∈ R2 is the x−y coordinate of robot i
constant s[k] = s(> 0). For any i ∈ V, the following position, and ui [k] ∈ R2 is the control input. ui [k] is
equation holds:

sC12 C2
lim sup J(x̂i [k]) ≤ J ∗ + ,
k→∞ 2
 
nβ
C1 = max dJi (ξ ) , C2 = n 1 + 8 2 + ,
ξ 1−β
η
β =1− , Figure 1. Network structure (m rows and n columns).
4n2
1 
k−1
x̂i [k] = xi [h] (k = 2, 3, . . .)
k−1
h=0

where η is the minimum value of non-zero elements of

the Perron matrix P[14, 15]. Summarizing all agents,
the overall system is given by

x[k + 1] = Px[k] − s[k]dJ (x[k]). (6) Figure 2. Neighbourhood in each direction.

 SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 27

f
composed of the consensus control law ui [k] ∈ R2 for
g
preserving formation, the control law ui [k] ∈ R2 for
reaching the target position, uci [k] ∈ R2 for avoiding
robot collision and uoi [k] ∈ R2 for avoiding obstacle
collision as follows:
f g
ui [k] = ui [k] + ui [k] + uci [k] + uoi [k].
For simplicity, regarding the convergence of the
algorithm proposed in this paper, we do not consider
the transient state with collision avoidance, but discuss
the steady state. This is because the potential func-
tions do not always converge to certain values except
in steady-state conditions where there are no collisions.
(9) That is, if uci [k] = uoi [k] = 0 in Equation (9), then

Substituting Equation (9) into Equation (8) and f g

pi [k + 1] = pi [k] + ui [k] + ui [k]
arranging vertically for i(= 1, 2, . . . , n), we obtain
f
pi [k] + ui [k] is attributed to the consensus control with
p[k + 1] = p[k] + uf [k] + ug [k] + uc [k] + uo [k]. g
bias in Section 2.2. Also, ui [k] satisfies the convergence
(10)
f g c condition for distributed optimization in Section 2.3
Consider the inputs u [k], u [k] and u [k]. The for- g
because Vi (r) is a convex function from Equations (14)
mation control preserving the desired distance between
and (15). The existing results [12–15] guarantee that
the inter-connected robots is based on consensus con-
the algorithm proposed in this paper converges in the
trol. The desired vectors representing the distance
steady state. Instead of considering the convergence
between robot i and robot j ∈ {Ri , Li , Fi , Bi } ⊆ Ni are
condition with collision avoidance, we aim to propose
given as follows:
a control algorithm that takes into account stability
  
0 0 −d as much as possible in transient states where obstacle
dRi = , d Li = , dFi = ,
d −d 0 avoidance is considered. The collision avoidance of this
 paper is so called ‘soft constraint’ such that the repul-
d
dBi = . (11) sion force does not diverge to infinity when a group
0 of robots maintaining a formation avoids an obsta-
For the swarm robots to form the desired shape, the cle. Since the exponential function is differentiable, the
following conditions need to be satisfied. force imbalance problem can be analysed at the pole of
  a linear approximation system.
 
lim pi [k] − pj [k] − dj  Also, to prevent robots from colliding with each
k→∞ other, we consider the repulsive potential function
 
  Vic (r) given by
= lim p̂i [k] − p̂j [k] = 0, j ∈ Ni (12)
k→∞
 −
r−pj
where p̂i [k](= pi [k] − dj /2), p̂j [k](= pj [k] + dj /2) are Vic (r) = kc e σc 2 (16)
the target relative vectors. From this, formation con- i [k]
j∈N
trol can be expressed by the consensus control law. The
consensus control law for preserving formation is given where kc , σc ∈ R+ are the adjustment parameters. The
by i [k] = {j ∈ V p − p ≤ ρ} is the set of other
set N i j
   robots that the robot detects with its sensors. Vic (r) is a
f
ui [k] = −ε aij pi [k] − pj [k] − dj (13) circularly spreading potential function. uci [k] are given
j∈Ni by the gradient of the corresponding potential function:
where dj (j ∈ {Ri , Li , Fi , Bi }) is given by (11). The gravi- 
c ∂Vic (r) T
g ui [k] = − α (17)
tational potential function Vi (r) for robot i to reach the ∂r pi [k]
target position is given by
 2 where α > 0 is the step size.
g  
Vi (r) = kg x − xgi  (14) The problem this paper considers is to reduce
the robot oscillatory behaviour near obstacles and to
where kg ∈ R+ is the adjustment parameter, r denotes recover the formation after the avoidance of obsta-
the vector of r = [x y]T . The target value xgi is given to cles. Two issues are raised against the column forma-
the first column of the formation as the target value xg , tion (10)–(17). The first issue is to alleviate the imbal-
and xg − n d is given to the n th column from the first ance between the attractive force for preserving the
column as the target value xg . The input xgi [k] is the formation and the repulsive force for avoiding obsta-
gradient of the potential function in Equation (14) cles. In addition, there is a force imbalance between
T the robots in the formation control. The second issue
∂Vi (r) 
g
g is to eliminate the stagnation of the swarm robots in
ui [k] = − α  (15)
∂r  front of the large obstacle. A solution to the first issue
pi [k]
is to design a new network weight aij instead of (7). We
where α is the step size. design the network weight aij in (13) depending on the
28 S. SHIBAHARA ET AL.

relative distance between the robots. Also, as a solution
to the second issue, we design the input uo [k] in (10)
that changes the shape of the time varying potential
function depending on the relative angle between the
robot and the obstacle.
4. Main results
To consider the two issues, we introduce the variable âi
that represents the detection/nondetection of obstacle
(= 1, 2, . . . , c) by robot i as follows [16]:
   To solve the above open problem of [9], this paper
1 if pi − po  − r − R ≤ D
âi = (18)
0 otherwise
where D > 0 is a threshold of detection/nondetecton, po
is the coordinate of obstacle , r and R are radius of
robot i and obstacle , respectively. This variable âi is
used in the design of the network weight function and
the time-varying potential function.
where σ > 0 is a threshold. As shown in the blue line of
Figure 3(a), this weight becomes 0 when the strength of
the connection between the robots is less than σ . The
weight aij in (20) includes the weight aij in (19) as a
special case σ → 0. This disconnection eliminates the
imbalance between the attractive force for preserving
the formation and the repulsive force when the robots
diverge each other due to the collision avoidance. On
the other hand, there still remains the imbalance force
when the distance between the robots becomes close.
This phenomenon is demonstrated in Section 5.
proposes a new network weight function that changes
its value depending on the displacement between the
robot relative distance pi − pj and the desired dis-
tance d as shown in Figure 3(b). That is, the proposed
network weight function is defined as follows:
   
  
aij = exp − pi − pj  − d if j ∈ Ni . (21)

4.1. Design of network weight function

This works to weaken the formation control when
This section considers the first issue related to the net- the distance between the networked robots is greater
work weight aij in (13). We apply a network weight or less than the desired distance d as shown in Figure
function depending on the distance between robots 3(b). (21) may alleviate the force imbalance when the
to preserve the formation of swarm robots after the desired formation cannot be maintained due to the
collision avoidance. obstacle avoidance. The effectiveness is demonstrated
The previous study [9] proposes two types of net- in Section 5.
work weight functions. The first one takes into account
the distance between robot i and robot j as follows:
d 4.2. Time-varying potential function
aij =   if j ∈ Ni . (19)
 
pi − pj  This section considers the second issue related to the
input ue [k] in (10). To avoid the obstacles, the previous
In Figure 3(a), the orange line shows the shape work of the current authors [9] uses a circularly spread-
of aij . The weight aij corresponds to the strength of ing potential function. The large number of robots
the connection between robot i and robot j. The dis- causes stagnation around obstacles. This situation will
tance between the robots decreases, the corresponding be demonstrated in Section 5. To address this issue,
strength increases. The second one takes into account this paper considers a time-varying potential function.
the disconnection of the network: The basic idea is the potential function considering the
⎧  
 d  if   relative angle between the robot and the obstacle [11].
⎪
⎨  −p   pi − p j ≤ ρ
pi j  First, we explain the potential function proposed in
aij = (20) [11]. r denotes the vector of r = [x y]T . The repulsive
⎪
⎩0 if âi = 1 and  d  < σ
pi −pj  potential function Vio (r) for robot i to avoid obstacle

Figure 3. Network weight function: (a) previous method [9] and (b) proposed method.
 SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 29

is given by This makes it difficult for the robots to preserve the





desired formation after avoiding obstacles. To avoid
r−po 

c
go − 2
this problem, we consider changing the shape of the
Vio (r) = ko w (θi )âi e σo (22) potential function from a circle to an ellipse. In addi-
=1 tion, we adjust the lengths of the major and minor axes
based on the positional relationship between the robot
where ko , σo ∈ R+ are the adjustment parameters.
go and the obstacle. The resulting time-varying repulsive
w (θi ) is the weight function depending on the rel-
go
potential function makes the swarm robots stay in the
ative angle θi between the robot and the obstacle. If desired formation after avoiding obstacles. Specifically,
go
w (θi ) is constant, (22) is a circularly spreading func- the repulsive potential function Vio (r) for robot i to
tion whose exponent is the distance between robot i avoid the obstacle is given by
and obstacles (= 1, 2, . . . , c). The previous study [11]

c
achieves smooth collision avoidance by introducing the Vio (r) =
go
ko w (θi )âi
go
weight function w (θi ). The target position of [11] is a =1
single point, while the target position of this paper is not ⎡ ⎧  2 ⎫⎤
⎨ x − p 2
y − poy ⎬
a single point for the straight-line movement. For sim-
exp ⎣− ox
+ ⎦,
plicity of explanation, we use the relative angle that is in ⎩ σo + σ x σo + σ y ⎭
line with the problem setting of this paper as shown in ⎧   
go
Figure 4. The relative angle θi between the direction ⎨ kx R  go  go
θs − θi  if 0 < θi < θs
of robot i and obstacle is given by σx = r ,
⎩
  0 otherwise
−1 ex· pi − po
⎧  
⎨ ky R 
go
θi = cos (23)  go  go
p − p  − θs − θi  if 0 < θi < θs
i o σy = r
⎩
where ex is the unit vector in the x-axis direction. The 0 otherwise
go
weight function w (θi ) proposed in [11] enables us to (25)
change the range of influence of the repulsive force, for
where kx , ky ∈ R+ are the adjustment parameters,
example, from circularly spreading to teardrop spread-
pox , poy are the x, y coordinates of the obstacle . The
ing. The weight is given by
initial shape of the repulsive potential function is elon-
go gated in the direction of x-axis when the relative angle
w (θi ) go
⎧  
go
 θi is almost all 0. The shape shrinks in the direction of
⎨c e−cs rad θi + c0 if 0 < θi
go
< θs x-axis and goes to a circular one as the robot approaches
w
= , the obstacle in the direction of x-axis and crosses the
⎩
0 otherwise obstacle. The situation is shown in Figure 5.
1 Finally, the input uoi [k] is given by the gradient of
cw =  , c0 = −e−cs rad(θs ) (24) Vi (r) is given by
o
1 − e−cs rad(θs )

where cs , θs ∈ R+ are the adjustment parameters, rad() o ∂Vio (r) T
ui [k] = − α (26)
is the radian of the angle unit. Varying the repulsion ∂r pi [k]
potential function based on the relative angle can avoid
where α is the step size. Applying the time-varying
an unnecessarily large turn due to the collision avoid-
repulsive potential function, we can generate a trajec-
ance.
tory (solid red line) for the robot that smoothly avoids
Second, based on the above idea, we consider the
obstacles as shown in Figure 6.
mitigation of the stagnation phenomenon when swarm
robots avoid the large obstacle. The stagnation of swarm
robots causes a misalignment of the robot positions. 5. Numerical experiment
In this study, numerical experiments are conducted
using MATLAB. The five experimental patterns pre-
pare a combination of the network weight aij and the
potential function Vio (r) used in (26) against the col-
umn formation (10)–(15). This paper verifies the tra-
jectories and analyses the stability of the swarm robots.
Table 1 shows the parameters for each experiment.
In this paper, gain tuning is a trial-and-error process.
The larger the size of the obstacle, the larger the gain.
Figure 4. Angle setting. The sensing range ρ should be larger than D, since the
30 S. SHIBAHARA ET AL.

go go go
Figure 5. Angle-based potential function: (a) θi 0, (b) θi π/4, (c) θi π/2.

Figure 6. Trajectory of robot avoiding obstacle: (a) conventional and (b) proposed.

Table 1. Parameters for each experiments.

Parameter Trajectories Stability analysis
N, m, n, c 10000,100, 100, 3 2500, 50, 50, 1
d, σ , ρ, D 1, 0.8, 50, 10
kg , kc , kx , ky , cs 0.05, 5, 0.05, 0.05, 1.5
ko 450,2000, 6000 6000
σo 1.5, 1.5, 2.75 2.75
r 0.1
R 0.75, 1.25, 2.5 2.5
po (105, 179), (115, 220), (140, 190) (140, 190)

size of the obstacle is taken into account in the design

of (25).

(a) The network weight aij is (7) and the potential

go
function Vio (r) is (22) (w (θi ) is constant) (Con-
ventional).
(b) The network weight aij is (19) and the poten-
go
tial function Vio (r) is (22) (w (θi ) is constant)
(Previous 1 [9]).
(c) The network weight aij is (20) and the poten-
go
tial function Vio (r) is (22) (w (θi ) is constant)
(Previous 2 [9]).
(d) The network weight aij is (21) and the potential
function Vio (r) is (22) (Proposed 1).
(e) The network weight aij is (21) and the potential Figure 7. Convergence to target position.
function Vio (r) is (25) (Proposed 1 + Proposed 2).

First of all, we focus on convergence in steady state
without collision. The convergence with respect to the
objective function is shown in Figure 7 where only V g
is considered because V g is for tracking. The target x-
coordinate of the first row (i = 1, 2, . . . , 100) is set to
xg and the target position of the robots in the n th row
from the top is set to xg − n d. Figure 7 shows that
the all patterns converge to the target position after
enough time has passed. This result indicates that the
all potential functions do not adversely affect the objec-
tive function V g for tracking in a collision-free steady
state.
In the following sections, the target position is set to
a common value for all robots for simplicity (all xgi are
the same) and we discuss the oscillatory behaviour and
stability of the algorithms during collision avoidance.
 SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 31

5.1. Trajectories the previous study [9]. In pattern (d), we use the pro-
posed network weight function (21) and a potential
The results of numerical experiments are shown in
function with weights that adjust the repulsion depend-
Figures 8 and 9. The solid black line represents the
ing on the angle [11]. Pattern (d) of Figures 8 and 9
trajectory of the swarm robots, and the gray circles rep-
shows that the proposed network weight function (21)
resent the obstacles. Pattern (a) is the power imbalance
reduces the oscillatory behaviours near obstacles. How-
between maintaining formation and avoiding obstacles,
ever, the swarm robots are not able to recover to the
Patterns (b)(c) are the force imbalance between robots
desired formation after avoiding obstacles. The cause of
in formation control, Pattern (d) is the non-recovery
this is thought to be the stagnation of the swarm robots
of the formation after avoiding obstacles, Pattern (e)
in front of the large obstacle. In pattern (e), which uses
is recover formation after avoiding obstacles. In pat-
the proposed potential function (25), the swarm robots
tern (a), oscillatory behaviours are observed near the
are able to recover to the desired formation without
obstacles. Patterns (b) and (c), to which the method of
stagnating in front of the obstacle.
the previous study [9] is applied, also show oscillatory
Figure 10 shows the x-coordinate of the robots
behaviours. This is because the repulsion force becomes
(i = 1, 2, . . . , 100) at the head of the formation as the
too large due to the network weight functions (19)
ordinate and the number of steps k as the abscissa.
and (20) when the robots are too close to each other.
These figures indicate the degree of convergence to the
As a result of increasing the total number of robots,
target x-coordinate xg . Since the variation of Pattern
the oscillation could not be reduced by the method of
(e) is small against Patterns (a)–(c), it is considered

Figure 8. Trajectories (Overall): (a) conventional (https://youtu.be/vHTK1puPgks); (b) previous 1 (https://youtu.be/srIqiULaq_k);

(c) previous 2 (https://youtu.be/YMdJ66GBmTk); (d) proposed 1 (https://youtu.be/VORZN3kF2_w); (e) proposed 1 + proposed 2
(https://youtu.be/X-Kxfbv-LJ4).
32 S. SHIBAHARA ET AL.
Figure 9. Trajectories (Enlarge): (a) conventional; (b) previous 1; (c) previous 2; (d) proposed 1; (e) proposed 1 + proposed 2.
that the imbalance between the attraction of the for-
mation control and the repulsion of obstacle avoid-
ance has been alleviated by the proposed method. Also,
comparing Pattern (e) with Pattern (d), we see that
the time-varying repulsive potential function elimi-
nates the stagnation in front of obstacles during the
formation movement.
5.2. Stability analysis
To analyse the proposed method, we approximate
the entire robots behaviour to the form p[k + 1] =
A[k]p[k], and perform eigenvalue analysis from the
coefficient matrix A[k]. Specifically, for each step, we
obtain a linear approximation system and its eigen-
values. When the maximum eigenvalue exceeds 1, it
means that the robots leave the desired position and
diverge due to obstacle avoidance. For Patterns (a),
(b), (d), and (e), the eigenvalues are obtained as real
numbers because the coefficient matrices are symmet-
ric. In Pattern (c), the coefficient matrix is sometimes
not symmetric because of the network disconnections.
In Figure 11, we compare the maximum eigenvalues
for each pattern. This figure shows that the maximum
eigenvalues of Patterns (a)–(c) are oscillatory and the
robots divergence is large. In Patterns (d) and (e),
the maximum eigenvalues are not oscillatory and the
robots divergence is small. Pattern (c) has the highest
robots divergence among all patterns, and Pattern (e)
has the lowest. The reason of the worst result due to Pat-
tern (c) is that we increased the total number of robots
compared to the problem setting in the previous study
[9]. In the previous study [9], the oscillatory behaviour
is not completely suppressed, and it is believed that
the increase in the total number of robots caused the
oscillation to propagate. The proposed method in this
study can be applied even when the total number of
robots is increased, and this method is considered to be
 SICE JOURNAL OF CONTROL, MEASUREMENT, AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION 33

Figure 10. x-coordinate of robots (i = 1, 2, . . . , 100): (a) conventional; (b) previous 1; (c) previous 2; (d) proposed 1; (e) proposed 1
+ proposed 2.

effective. Also, the maximum eigenvalues for different 6. Conclusion

values of gain and sensing range for obstacle avoidance
This paper has proposed a network weight function and
are summarized in Table 2. From this, pattern (e) is the
a time-varying repulsion potential function for obstacle
smallest even when the gain is changed. In other words,
avoidance of swarm robots in column formation. The
the two proposed methods have the lowest degree of
proposed network weight function is a method to
instability regardless of the gain value.
reduce the force of the formation control according
34 S. SHIBAHARA ET AL.

Figure 11. Comparison of the maximum value of the eigenvalues: (a) overall and (b) enlarge.

Table 2. Comparison of stability for each gain. Takuma Wakasa received the B.E. and
ko ρ
M. E degrees in mechanical engineer-
ing from the University of Electro-
1000 1200 1400 1600 5 15 Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 2019
(a) 1.28 1.30 1.32 1.64 1.68 4.22 and 2021. His research interests include
(b) 122 60.6 30.1 131 44.3 177 the control theory of multi-agent sys-
(c) 20.9 48.7 80.2 52.9 48.5 319 tems.
(d) 1.61 1.61 1.61 1.61 1.69 1.63
(e) 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.63 1.26
Kenji Sawada received his Ph.D. degree
in engineering in 2009 from Osaka
University. He is an Associate Pro-
fessor in Info-Powered Energy Sys-
to the distance between robots. The repulsion poten-
tem Research Center, The University of
tial function is a method to change the shape accord- Electro-Communications, Japan. He is
ing to the angle between the direction of motion and also an advisor of Control System Secu-
the obstacle. From the results of the numerical exper- rity Center since 2016. He received Out-
iments, the oscillatory behaviour of the swarm robots standing Paper Awards from FA Foundation (2015 and 2019),
during obstacle avoidance is reduced compared to the Fluid Power Technology Promotion foundation (2018), and
JSME (2018). His research interests include the control the-
conventional method, and the desired formation can ory of cyber-physical systems and control system security. He
be preserved after passing through the obstacle. Future is a member of IEICE, ISCIE, IEEJ, JSME, IEEE.
work is a generalization of the parameter selection and
consideration of the limited sensor range.
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