Novel potential-function-based control scheme for non-holonomic multi-agent systems to prevent the local minimum problem

In this paper, we consider a control problem of a non-holonomic multi-agent system. We assume that agents and obstacles are in a circular shaped work area. We propose a novel potential-function-based control scheme that drives agents from the initial to the goal configuration while avoiding collision with other agents, obstacles, and the boundary of the work area. The control scheme enables agents to avoid being trapped at local minima by forcing them to exit from the regions that may contain local minima. A numerical simulation is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed control scheme.