Multi-Cluster Flocking Behavior Analysis for a Delayed Cucker-Smale Model with Short-Range Communication Weight

This paper analyzes the multi-cluster flocking behavior of a Cucker-Smale model involving delays and a short-range communication weight. In each sub-flocking group, the velocity between agents is alignment and the position locates at a limited domain; but in different sub-flocking groups,the position between agents is unbounded. By constructing dissipative differential inequalities of subensembles together with Lyapunov functional methods, the authors provide the sufficient condition for the multi-cluster flocking emerging. The sufficient condition includes the estimation of the range of coupling strength and the upper bound of time delay. As a result, the authors show that the coupling strength among agents and initial threshold value determine the multi-cluster flocking behavior of the delayed Cucker-Smale model.