Distributed Control for Group Assignment of Multi-agent Systems

In this paper, we address a group assignment problem, which is a new concept of control of multi-agent systems in multiple groups. In this problem, for multiple groups of reference states, each group of agents is allowed to achieve any group of reference states. In addition, agents have to determine which reference states they achieve by themselves. This is more difficult than conventional assignment problems because both the assignment of groups and that of reference states have to be determined simultaneously. In this paper, a distributed controller to solve this problem is designed through the gradient-flow approach. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulations.