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Collective motions including rendezvous, circular patterns, and logarithmic spiral patterns can be achieved by introducing Cartesian coordinate coupling to existing consensus algorithms. We study the collective motions of a team of vehicles in 3-D by introducing a rotation matrix to an existing consensus algorithm for double-integrator dynamics. It is shown that the network topology, the damping gain, and the value of the Euler angle all affect the resulting collective motions. We show that when the nonsymmetric Laplacian matrix has certain properties, the damping gain is above a certain bound, and the Euler angle is below, equal, or above a critical value, the vehicles will eventually rendezvous, move on circular orbits, or follow logarithmic spiral curves lying on a plane perpendicular to the Euler axis. In particular, when the vehicles eventually move on circular orbits, the relative radii of the orbits (respectively, the relative phases of the vehicles on their orbits) are equal to the relative magnitudes (respectively, the relative phases) of the components of a right eigenvector associated with a critical eigenvalue of the nonsymmetric Laplacian matrix. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the theoretical results. Index Terms--Collective motion, consensus, cooperative control, distributed algorithms, multi-vehicle systems.

This note considers consensus algorithms for double-integrator dynamics. We propose and analyze consensus algorithms for double-integrator dynamics in four cases: 1) with a bounded control input, 2) without relative velocity measurements, 3) with a group reference velocity available to each team member, and 4) with a bounded control input when a group reference state is available to only a subset of the team. We show that consensus is reached asymptotically for the first two cases if the undirected interaction graph is connected. We further show that consensus is reached asymptotically for the third case if the directed interaction graph has a directed spanning tree and the gain for velocity matching with the group reference velocity is above a certain bound. We also show that consensus is reached asymptotically for the fourth case if and only if the group reference state flows directly or indirectly to all of the vehicles in the team. Index Terms--Consensus, cooperative control, coordination, graph theory, multivehicle systems.

This note considers the problem of information consensus among multiple agents in the presence of limited and unreliable information exchange with dynamically changing interaction topologies. Both discrete and continuous update schemes are proposed for information consensus. This note shows that information consensus under dynamically changing interaction topologies can be achieved asymptotically if the union of the directed interaction graphs have a spanning tree frequently enough as the system evolves. Index Terms--Cooperative control, graph theory, information consensus, multiagent systems, switched systems.