Synchronization of a Group of Mobile Agents With Variable Speeds Over Proximity Nets

This paper focuses on the synchronization analysis of a class of multiagent systems, where both speed and heading of each agent depend on the states of its local neighbors. The neighbors are defined through the distance between agents and all agents are interconnected via proximity nets. In the variable speed model, the speed of each agent depends on the polarization order of its neighbors in a power-law manner, and the heading is updated according to the average heading of its neighbors. Therefore, the speeds, headings, and positions of all agents are strongly coupled together. For the uniformly and independently distributed initial states, we provide sufficient conditions, imposed only on model parameters, to guarantee synchronization of the variable speed model in the following two cases: 1) the maximum speed and the neighborhood radius are fixed constants and 2) the maximum speed and the neighborhood radius are changing with the population size. Our results reveal that the permitted maximum speed in the variable speed model can be larger than that in the relevant constant speed model.