IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO.
5, SEPTEMBER 2015
Broadcast Control Mechanism for Positional
Consensus in Multiagent Systems
Kaushik Das and Debasish Ghose
Abstract— In this paper, a strategy for controlling a group of
agents to achieve positional consensus is presented. The problem
is constrained by the requirement that every agent must be
given the same control input through a broadcast communication
mechanism. Although the control command is computed using
state information in a global framework, the control input
is implemented by the agents in a local coordinate frame.
We propose a novel linear programming (LP) formulation that
is computationally less intensive than earlier proposed methods.
Moreover, a random perturbation input in the control command
that helps the agents to come close to each other even for
a large number of agents, which was not possible with an
existing strategy in the literature, is introduced. The method
is extended to achieve positional consensus at a prespecified
location. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated through
simulation results. A comparison between the LP approach and
the existing second-order cone programming-based approach is
also presented. The algorithm was successfully implemented on
a robotic platform with three robots.
Index Terms— Broadcast control, consensus, ensemble control,
LEGO robots, linear programming (LP), multiagent system.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE principle of using multiple agents is motivated by
the idea that instead of using highly sophisticated and
expensive robots, it may be advantageous in certain situations
to use a group of small, simple, and relatively cheap robots.
One of the problems that is of paramount importance in mul-
tiagent systems is that of achieving consensus, i.e., achieving
identical values for some specified subset of the states of the
agents. An important consensus problem is when the agents
may want to converge to a point [1]–[3]. Some applications
of this class of problem are in midair refueling of the aircraft
or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), exchange of information
between agents, targeting a geographical location, and so on.
The problem addressed in this paper was motivated by
a paper by Bretl [4], where a control strategy for a group
of microrobots is developed to perform a useful task even
when every robot receives the same control signal. This paper
considers point robots with simple kinematics. It was
Manuscript received May 9, 2013; revised January 22, 2014 and July
16, 2014; accepted November 26, 2014. Date of publication January 23,
2015; date of current version August 7, 2015. Manuscript received in
final form December 31, 2014. This work was supported by the Asian
Office of Aerospace Research and Development—Air Force Office of
Scientific Research, Arlington, VA, USA. Recommended by Associate
Editor M. Mesbahi.
The authors are with the Guidance, Control, and Decision Systems
Laboratory, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute
of Science, Bangalore 560012, India (e-mail: kshikdas@gmail.com;
dghose@aero.iisc.ernet.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2015.2388732
1063-6536 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1807
shown that when there are only two agents, there exists a
broadcast control command [i.e., both agents receive identical
instructions from the central controller (CC)] using which
both agents can meet at the same location at the same time for
almost all initial conditions. However, if the number of agents
is more than two, then the best that the agents can achieve is to
come close within a certain distance of each other (measured
by the radius of the smallest disc that contains all the agents’
positions). Bretl [4] formulates this problem as an optimization
problem that minimizes the radius of the disc, and proposes
a solution using the second-order cone programming (SOCP)
technique [5]–[7]. However, using Bretl’s strategy the agents
cannot be made to converge to a point. Once the solution of
the SOCP is implemented, no further improvement is possible.
Bretl’s paper was in turn motivated by an interesting paper
by Donald et al. [8] on the development of untethered,
steerable microrobots, where every robot receives the same
power and control signal through an underlying electrical
grid. These robots mainly have two components. One is an
untethered scratch drive actuator used for forward locomotion.
The other component is a cantilevered steering arm used
for turning through a frictional contact with the substrate.
These microrobots are simple in construction and can operate
only in a local coordinate frame. They do not have sensory
capabilities to determine their position and orientation in the
global coordinate frame neither do they have the capability to
localize themselves in relation to their neighboring objects or
other robots.
There are other applications, where these concepts can be
useful. The microscale and nanoscale robots have very little
onboard computation capability. They are mainly controlled by
global signals. One can find examples in the literature, where
robots are controlled through global signals. Tung et al. [9]
present a class of wireless resonant magnetic microactuator
that integrates a polymer spring/body structure with electro-
plated ferromagnetic masses. Schürle et al. [10] describe a
holonomic manipulation system consisting of eight individual
electromagnets for the generation of magnetic fields and gradi-
ents to control objects at the nanoscale. Diller et al. [11], [12]
develop methods for controlling multiple untethered magnetic
microrobots (called Mag-μ Bots) having all dimensions under
1 mm, without the need for a specialized surface where
Mag-μ Bots are geometrically and magnetically designed
to respond uniquely to the same magnetic field.
Hasegawa et al. [13] present a novel real-time visual feedback
control system for electronic-field controlled paramecium.
Steager et al. [14] present electrokinetic and optically
controlled microbiorobots (MBRs), where bacteria are
1808 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015
attached to the surface of the robots through microfabrication
process. Felfoul et al. [15] report the successful navigation of
magnetotactic bacteria toward regions located inside a solid
tumor using a computer controlled set of magnetic coils.
Ou et al. [16] present a model predictive control algorithm
to control the magnetotactic Tetrahymena pyriformis as a
MBR based on a discrete-time plant model. Shirai et al. [17]
present directional control of thermally driven single-molecule
nanocars. Chiang et al. [18] present the development of a
light driven nanocar.
The above examples are of micro and nanorobots being used
for various applications and some of them are designed to
respond to identical signals available to all the robots (for
instance, magnetic fields). This is similar to the broadcast
mechanism used in [4] and in this paper.
Broadcast-based control of multiagent systems is also sim-
ilar to ensemble control [19]. There are several works related
to ensemble control that can be found in the literature. Some
of the works are listed below. Becker et al. [20] present
a globally asymptotically stabilizing feedback control policy
for a group of differential-drive robots based on ensemble
control. This paper addresses the problem of consensus to a
specified rendezvous point using innovative control policies.
Becker and Bretl [21] present a problem of steering a nonholo-
nomic unicycle in the presence of model perturbation based
on ensemble control. Becker and Bretl [22] present a steering
algorithm of a modified plate-ball system under model pertur-
bation using ensemble control. Bretl [23] presents a problem of
minimum time optimal control problem for a group of robots
that move in the same direction but with different speeds.
If we have a centralized system with perfect information
then achieving consensus is a trivial matter, since the CC
can instruct each agent to reach a common consensus point.
However, if the communication system is simple and can only
send messages by broadcast then one may opt for a broadcast
protocol, where the CC communicates simple and identical
instructions to all the agents through a broadcast mechanism.
It may be further required to impose the additional con-
straint that each agent can interpret the control command only
in its local coordinate frame or local state space. Only the CC
has access to the global states of the system. Some of these
constraints are common to other problems of a similar nature
(see [2], [24], [25]).
Our paper makes several specific contributions. The first
is to propose a strategy that uses the basic Bretl’s model
with an additional randomization feature that helps in dislodg-
ing the solution from local minima, allowing a reasonably
large number of agents to achieve positional consensus or
point convergence on repeated application of the algorithm
without compromising the broadcast constraint on the control
command. Although exact positional consensus may not be
possible when the number of agents is large, the method
allows such agents to come very close to each other. The
second contribution is that our method can be extended to
the case, where the agents can be made to converge to any
prespecified point. The third contribution is to propose a
rectilinear bounding box approach for the optimization
problem (as against the circular bounding box approach used
in earlier work), which leads to a simple but elegant linear
programming (LP) formulation. This allows standard com-
putational algorithms to be used for obtaining the solution
and reduces the computation time significantly. Moreover,
this formulation also retains the property that the number of
decision variables, whose values are to be communicated to
agents, remains unchanged even when the number of agents
increases. Finally, we also identify some interesting properties
related to the positional consensus of agents when the
LP-based strategy is applied iteratively.
It is worth noting that the randomization feature in the
algorithm has some similarity with the random perturbation
used in [26], which proposes a simple discrete time model of n
autonomous agents (points or particles) all moving on a plane
with constant speeds but with different headings. Each agent
updates its heading using a local rule based on the average of
the headings of its neighbors plus some random perturbation.
They show that this nearest neighbor rule can cause all agents
to move eventually in the same direction although each agent’s
set of nearest neighbors changes with time as the system
evolves. Subsequent work (for instance, [27]) attempt to
modify the basic control scheme to obtain faster convergence.
Some of our previous works [28]–[30] present some
preliminary results on the broadcast-based consensus
problem. In [28], an LP-based broadcast mechanisms was
proposed to achieve positional consensus. In [29], a flag
setting-based modified broadcast algorithm was proposed to
achieve positional consensus for a system of multiagents.
In [30], an LP-based decentralized algorithm for a group
of multiple autonomous agents was proposed to achieve
positional consensus. Some of our other works [31]–[34] used
the idea of rectilinear decision domain, which also led to an
LP formulation, to achieve rendezvous for multiagent systems.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we
consider two agents and show that it is possible to move
two agents to a common location using identical control.
In Section III, we formulate an LP problem for minimizing the
proximity between agents using identical broadcast control.
In Section IV, we introduce the notion of iterative solution
of the problem by repeated use of the LP algorithm and
show that introducing a random perturbation in the broad-
cast mechanism leads to point convergence of the agents.
In Section V, we present a modification of the algorithm
to ensure that the swarm of agents converge to a prespeci-
fied point. In Section VI, we present some broadcast-based
algorithms in conjunction with selective enabling of agents.
In Section VII, we show several simulation results that illus-
trate some interesting features of the proposed algorithm.
In Section VIII, we demonstrate the applicability of the
algorithm on a testbed made by LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Robots. Section IX concludes this paper with a discussion of
possible future directions of research.
II. F ORMULATION AND S OLUTION FOR T WO AGENTS
As in Bretl’s paper [4], point robots with simple kinematics
are considered. Here, the problem is first formulated in a
general framework, followed by a specific two agents case
which is used to clarify the assumptions and concepts.
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
Fig. 1. (a) Basic configuration. (b) Configuration with two agents.
Assume that n agents are located on an obstacle-free plane.
A CC has access to the global state of the system which, in
this case, consists of the position (x i ∈ R2 ) and orientation
(θi ∈ (−π, π]) of all the agents, i = 1, . . . , n. The CC
computes a common local control and broadcasts it to all the
agents for implementation. The local control is in the form
of a tuple (θ, d), which is interpreted by each agent in its
local frame of reference. Here, θ refers to the angle by which
each agent changes its orientation, and d is a scalar that refers
to the distance by which each agent moves after effecting the
orientation change. Note that due to the broadcast mechanism,
(θ, d) is the same for all the agents. In addition, the local
frame of reference for each agent is centered at the agent’s
location and its reference axis is oriented along its current
orientation. As an illustration, see Fig. 1(a), where agents are
shown located initially at x i0 with initial orientation θi0 in the
global reference frame.
If the control command broadcast to all the agents is (θ, d),
then the agents implement it in their local coordinate frame
by each of them changing their orientation by the same angle
θ and advancing by the same distance d to reach the final
destination x i f . Even in this figure it can be seen that by doing
this the agents have come closer to each other. Our objective
is to determine a tuple (θ, d) such that the agents can achieve
the closest proximity with each other.
Theorem 1: For two agents, for all initial conditions of
the agents except when θ10 = θ20 , there exists a unique
control (θ, d) that makes the agents converge to a point.
Proof: Assuming only two agents, we have
 
d determine a (θ, d) that brings the agents in closest proximity
x i f = x i0 + R(θi0 )R(θ ) , i = 1, 2
0
where R(α) is the rotation matrix
 
cos α − sin α
R(α) = . (2)
sin α cos α
1809
Letting x 1 f = x 2 f we obtain
 
d
R(θ ) = [R(θ20 ) − R(θ10 )]−1 (x 10 − x 20 ). (3)
0
Equation (3) can be solved easily for d and θ if the
inverse on the right-hand side exists, which is true when
θ10 = θ20 .
This is illustrated in Fig. 1(b). Note that this result is also
available in [4] in a slightly modified form.
The above theorem shows that it is possible to use a
broadcast control command to make two agents meet at the
same location simultaneously for almost all initial conditions.
However, the solution is unique and hence the location of the
meeting point cannot be chosen arbitrarily.
One can also interpret this result by noting that the final
meeting point is on the Voronoi edge (equidistant line)
between the two initial positions of the agents [Fig. 2(a)].
It can be shown that only one unique point on the Voronoi
edge satisfies the requirement that the orientation angle change
is the same for both the agents [Fig. 2(b)]. In Fig. 2(a), the
point p moves on the equidistant line from −∞ to +∞
and the corresponding orientation angle change θ is plotted
for the two agents in Fig. 2(b). The two curves intersect
at ( p∗ , θ ∗ ) which represents the unique control command
point.
Note that when the number of agents is more than two,
each pair gives rise to a different unique meeting point.
In general, there does not exist a common control command
to be broadcast, so that all the agents meet at a point. In the
absence of such a command, the best that can be done is to
(1) with each other. Note that in this case (θ, d) may not be
unique.
Bretl [4] defines the radius of the smallest circle that
contains all the final points as the performance measure for
the algorithm. One of the problems that Bretl addressed in [4]
was to determine (θ, d) that minimizes the radius of the circle.
1810 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015

Fig. 2. Voronoi interpretation. (a) Equidistant from two points. (b) Unique point with same orientation change angle.

Bretl solves the problem numerically by formulating it as an

SOCP. This approach has two drawbacks.
1) The equations are nonlinear and consequently the SOCP
may become prohibitively compute-time intensive when
a large number of agents are involved.
2) Even when a solution is obtained, the agents can at best
come as close as possible to each other but they do not
converge to a point, thus defeating the ultimate goal of
achieving perfect consensus.
In the following section, we will propose a LP-based
solution to overcome both the drawbacks without compromis-
ing on the broadcast-based control mechanism.

III. L INEAR P ROGRAMMING F ORMULATION

AND S OME R ESULTS
Consider n points in R2 denoted by (x i , yi ), i = 1, . . . , n.
Fig. 3. Smallest rectangle and the smallest squares containing all the n points.
Define
x max = max{| x i − x j |: i, j = 1, . . . , n} (4)
ymax = max{| yi − y j |: i, j = 1, . . . , n}. (5) smallest square oriented along the global coordinate frame,
and containing all the final positions of the agents. Let this
These are the dimensions of the smallest rectangle (aligned square be centered at z = (z 1 , z 2 ) ∈ R2 . As pointed out earlier,
with the global coordinate frame) containing all the the square need not be unique, and hence, the center of the
points. square also need not be unique.
Define Assuming that all the agents execute the command (θ, d),
their final positions, given by pi, f = [qi1 qi2 θ f ] will be
max{x max , ymax } = 2r (6)
⎡ ⎤
which is also the length of the side of the smallest square cos θi0 − sin θi0 0
(aligned with the global coordinate frame) containing all the pi, f = pi,0 + ⎣ sin θi0 cos θi0 0 ⎦
n points. Note that the smallest rectangle is unique, whereas 0 0 1
⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤
the smallest square is not unique. This is illustrated by Fig. 3. cos θ − sin θ 0 d
It is also clear that the smallest rectangle is a subset of the × ⎣ sin θ cos θ 0 ⎦ ⎣ 0 ⎦. (7)
smallest square. 0 0 1 θ
Let the initial position and initial orientation of the n
That is
agents be pi,0 = [ pi1 pi2 θi0 ] where θi0 ∈ (−π, π], for all ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤
i ∈ {1, . . . , n}. As before, we define the control command to qi1 pi1 cos θi0 − sin θi0 0 u1
be broadcast as (θ, d). We define our performance measure ⎣ qi2 ⎦ = ⎣ pi2 ⎦ + ⎣ sin θi0 cos θi0 0 ⎦ ⎣ u 2 ⎦ (8)
as the half length, denoted by r > 0, of the side of the θf θi0 0 0 1 θ
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
Fig. 4. Illustration of how the square reduces in size using the LP solution.
where u 1 = d cos θ and u 2 = d sin θ are the control variables
that replace (θ, d). Note that (8) is a linear equation. Here
 side length from 2r0 to 2r ∗f , as shown in Fig. 4.
d = u12 + u22 (9)
−1 u 2
θ = tan . (10)
u1
Now, we formulate the LP problem as
min r
s.t. − r ≤ pi1 + u 1 cos θi0 − u 2 sin θi0 − z 1 ≤ r
−r ≤ pi2 + u 1 sin θi0 + u 2 cos θi0 − z 2 ≤ r,
i = 1, . . . , n
r ≥ 0.
The above is an LP problem with the decision vector as
(r, z 1 , z 2 , u 1 , u 2 ). Note that the decision vector remains the
same irrespective of the number of agents. Only the number
of inequality constraints increases with the number of agents.
In addition, note that z 1 , z 2 , u 1 , and u 2 are free variables
and can take both positive and negative values. Finally, after
obtaining u 1 and u 2 from the LP solution, the (θ, d) command
can be obtained using (9) and (10). An illustration of this
process is shown in Fig. 4.
After executing the movement command the distance
between agents ai and a j along the x- and y-axis will be
dxi j = |( pi1 − p j 1) + d(cos(θi + θ ) − cos(θ j + θ ))|
= |( pi1 − p j 1) + dC| (14)
d yi j = |( pi2 − p j 2 ) + d(sin(θi + θ ) − sin(θ j + θ ))|
= |( pi2 − p j 2 ) + d S| (15)
where C = [cos(θi + θ ) − cos(θ j + θ )], S = [sin(θi + θ ) −
sin(θ j + θ )], and i, j ∈ {1, . . . , n}. Thus, the resulting
distance along the x-axis and y-axis are dictated by the value
of C and S.
If (x i,k , yi,k ) and (x i,k+1 , yi,k+1 ), i = 1, . . . , n are two
sets of n points obtained at the kth and k + 1th iteration,
respectively (where each of these sets of points are obtained
as the result of executing LP). Then, ri,k+1 ≤ ri,k .
1811
Fig. 5. Generalization of the LP algorithm to multisteps.
However, note that starting from an arbitrary set of initial
coordinates the LP may not be able to produce an improved
solution. As an example, consider four agents with positions
and orientations as [(1, 5), 0°], [(1, 2), −262°], [(4, 3), 40°],
and [(4, 3.5), 180°]. The LP will not be able to produce an
improved solution.
The solution of the LP problem will yield control
instructions that can be broadcast to all the agents using
which the agents will move to a new position or within a new
square region of smaller area, i.e., a square with a reduced
It can be shown that no further improvement of the
performance (i.e., reduction in r ) can be achieved by repeated
use of the algorithm. In other words, repeated application of
the LP algorithm with the new final positions will not reduce
the value of r any further.
Suppose, the LP algorithm is represented as an operation L
(11) on the initial conditions that yields the solution as
L( pi0 |i = 1, . . . , n) = u ∗1 , u ∗2 , r ∗f , pi f (16)
(12)
(13) then
L( pi f |i = 1, . . . , n) = 0, 0, r ∗f , pi f . (17)
That is, there will be no further change in the performance
measure r . In other words, pi f is a stationary point so far as
the LP algorithm is concerned.
We can generalize this process by assuming that each step
in the iteration is denoted by the index k, with the first step
in the iteration as k = 1. Then, we can represent the process,
as shown in Fig. 5.
Theorem 2: For k ≥ 2, u ∗1,k = u ∗2,k = 0 and pi,k+1 = pi,k ,
i.e., repeated use of the LP solution on subsequent positions
will not reduce r .
Proof: We will prove this by contradiction. Suppose for
a given initial condition pi01 we have r = r as the measure
0
of proximity of the agents. Applying the LP algorithm, we
obtain u 1∗ 1∗ 1
1 , u 2 , r1 , and the final positions as pi f . Now,
considering the initial conditions as pi0 = pi f and applying
2 1
the LP algorithm let us assume that we get u 2∗1  = 0, u 2  = 0,
2∗
r2 < r1 , and the final positions as pi f . Then, let us define
2
û i = u 1∗
i + û i , i = 1, 2, where û i is u i expressed in
2∗ 2∗ 2∗
the initial local reference frame in which u 1∗
i is represented.
It can be shown that if in the first step û i is used it would
yield a r = r2 < r1 , which implies that r1 was not a solution
to the LP. This leads to a contradiction.
1812 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 6. Illustration for the proof of Theorem 3.
Before proving some general results on formation of agents
after the LP is executed we will state a lemma that will be
useful to prove the main results.
Lemma 1: If C = cos(θi + θ ) − cos(θ j + θ ) then there
exists a θ such that C < 0 where θi , θ j ∈ (−π, π] and θi = θ j .
Proof: Let θ = π − (θi − θ j /2) − φ. After replacing θ
in C we get C = −2 sin(θi − θ j /2) sin(φ). It is clear from
the expression that we can make C < 0 by choosing φ
appropriately.
An interesting observation is as follows.
Theorem 3: After executing the LP, the number of agents
on the boundary of the smallest rectangle containing all the
agents is more than two.
Proof: We will prove this by contradiction. Let the
number of agents on the smallest rectangle be two. Thus,
the two agents will be located at diagonally opposite corners.
The other agents will be in the interior of the rectangle. For the
sake of simplicity, we will consider only three agents. This is
illustrated in Fig. 6, where M N is the Voronoi edge (equidis-
tant line) between agents at A and B. According to Theorem 1,
there always exists (θ, d) such that the agents can meet at
an unique point on the Voronoi edge (M N). Let the unique
meeting point be F. Let us define a small positive quantity d
such that d < (1/4) min{η1 , η2 , η3 , η4 }, where η1 , . . . , η4
are as shown in Fig. 6. Consider that the agents use a common
(θ, d) and move from their current positions A and B such
that the new position of agents are C and D, respectively.
Similarly, the interior agent will also move according to the
same (θ, d). Note that all the agents will remain within
the circles of radius d centered at their previous positions.
In particular, it can be seen that there exists a d such that the
interior agent will remain inside the interior of the smallest
rectangle formed from the next positions of the three agents.
Now, AB F ∼ C D F and so C D AB and C D < AB.
This implies that further reduction in size of the rectangle is
possible or the rectangle formation with only two agents at the
boundaries is not optimal. This theorem can also be proved
using Lemma 1 and (14), selecting a d as given above.
Fig. 7. Perturbed case.
The proof for more than one interior agent is an easy
extension, where we can define d < (1/4) min{ηi1 , ηi2 ,
ηi3 , ηi4 }, ∀i , where i defines an interior agent.
This theorem shows that if there are only two agents on the
boundary of the smallest rectangle then the LP will certainly
yield a better solution.
IV. ACHIEVING C ONSENSUS U SING P ERTURBATIONS
The solution of the LP problem will yield control instruc-
tions that can be broadcast to all the agents, using which
the agents will move to a new position or within a new
square region of a smaller area, i.e., a square with a reduced
side length. It has been shown (Theorem 2) that no further
improvement of the performance (i.e., reduction in r ) can be
achieved by repeated use of the algorithm. In other words,
repeated application of the LP algorithm with the new final
positions will not reduce the value of r any further.
Now, consider a case where the agents receive a broadcast
command containing the LP solution and a command to
randomly perturb the final orientation angle after the LP
solution has been implemented.
This will be referred to as the perturbed case as against
the algorithm discussed in the previous section, which can be
referred to as the unperturbed case. The multistep process for
the perturbed case is shown in Fig. 7, where the orientation
angle, after implementing the LP solution, is perturbed by each
agent as follows:
θ̂i,k+1 = θi,k+1 + νi,k+1 . (18)
As an example, consider three agents with positions and
orientations [(1, 1), 45°], [(5, 4), 135°], and [(2, 6), −45°].
After executing the LP, the generated broadcast com-
mand will be (θ = 15.92°, d = 2.58). Therefore,
the agents will move to new positions [(2.25, 3.25), 60.92°],
[(2.75, 5.25), 150.92°], and [(4.25, 4.75), −29.08°]. The center
of the square is at (3.25, 4.25) and the length of its side is 2.
Further application of the LP algorithm will give zero solution
using these updated positions and orientations. After introduc-
ing perturbation of 50°, 100°, and 70° in the orientations of
the agents, and using these perturbed orientations, the LP gen-
erates the broadcast command (θ = 273.5°, d = 0.2602). The
agents will now move to new positions [(2.49, 3.36), 25.68°],
[(2.49, 5.32), 165.7°], and [(4.44, 4.56), 315.6°]. The center
of the new square is at (3.46, 4.34) and the length of its side
is 1.95. This numerical example has been illustrated in Fig. 8.
This example shows that introducing a perturbation helps in
moving the solution away from a local minima.
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
Fig. 8. Example of the perturbed case.
Any perturbation in one robot has the potential to move
the agents away from the local minimum and subsequent
application of LP will yield a solution which is at least as
good as, or better than, the previous local minimum. This is
true for perturbations to any number of robots. It is easy to
see that the above statement is true since the perturbations
are applied only to the directions and not to the positions of
the agents, which implies that the solution (0, 0), which will
keep the agents at the same positions, is a valid solution to
the perturbed problem.
To generalize this process, the perturbation angle νi,k+1 is
represented by
νi,k+1 = ηi β (19)
where ηi is a random number generated by each agent inde-
pendently and β is a scaling angle which is common to all
the agents. The scaling angle can be set manually and η can
be generated through various distributions. To ascertain if the
nature of the distribution effects the results, we consider two
cases. In one, η is generated as a uniformly distributed random
number and in the other, it is generated through a normal
distribution. However, in both the cases, we ensure that the
variance remains the same.
V. ACHIEVING P OSITIONAL C ONSENSUS
AT A D ESIRED P OINT
In the previous section, we considered the problem of
positional consensus, but did not have control over the position
at which the agents meet.
Suppose we have a prespecified meeting point defined
as (z 1 , z 2 ). This can be achieved as a consensus point by
modifying the previous formulation. In the modified formu-
lation given below, we define the performance measure to be
minimized as the length of the side of the smallest square,
centered at the specified meeting point (z 1 , z 2 ), which contains
all the agents. This is different from the problem formulated
in the previous section, where we considered the smallest
square that contained all the agents. Here, (z 1 , z 2 ) is fixed,
unlike in the previous cases, where (z 1 , z 2 ) was also a decision
variable. The illustration of the process can be observed in
Fig. 9, where initial positions of the agents are ai , a j , ak ,
and al . The final positions of the agents are ai , a j , ak , and al ,
respectively. The specified rendezvous point (z 1 , z 2 ) is used to
1813
Fig. 9. Illustration of agents gathering toward a specific point (z 1 , z 2 ).
define the smallest square that contains all the agents and has
its center at (z 1 , z 2 ). Note that if we consider only the square
that contains all the agents then its center will most likely be
different from (z 1 , z 2 ). Here, the input to the LP are the initial
positions, the initial orientation, and the meeting point. We can
formulate the modified LP problem as
min r g
s.t. − r g ≤ pi1 + u 1 cos θi0 − u 2 sin θi0 − z 1 ≤ r g (20)
−r g ≤ pi2 + u 1 sin θi0 + u 2 cos θi0 − z 2 ≤ r g ,
i = 1, . . . , n (21)
r g ≥ 0. (22)
The above is an LP problem with the decision vector as
(r g , u 1 , u 2 ). Note that the number of decision variables has
reduced over the previous formulation, where the rendezvous
point was not specified. The above formulation will try to min-
imize the square centered at the (z 1 , z 2 ) with side length 2r g .
The above formulation is equivalent to
min r g
s.t. − r g ≤ pi1 + u 1 cos θi0 − u 2 sin θi0 ≤ r g (23)

−r g ≤ pi2 + u 1 sin θi0 + u 2 cos θi0 ≤ r g ,
i = 1, . . . , n (24)
rg ≥ 0 (25)
 = p 
where pi1 i1 − z 1 and pi2 = pi2 − z 2 . It will try
to minimize the square centered at (0, 0) in the modified
coordinate system with side length 2r g . It is clear that,
 |, | p  |}. For further analysis, we will use this
r g ≤ max{| pi1 i2
formulation.
The following interesting properties of the algorithm are
relevant as they are in contrast to the results for the previous
case where the final point was not specified.
Property 1: For two agents, for the specified final point
case, even when θ10 = θ20 , there may not exist a control
(θ, d) using which point convergence can be achieved.
Proof: From Fig. 2(a), it is clear that the meeting point for
two agents is on the Voronoi edge, which may not go through
the origin (0, 0). Now, in the specified consensus point case,
1814 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 10. Example of the specified meeting point.
the meeting point is always the origin. Therefore, the two
agents cannot meet at a point for all initial conditions.
Property 2: For the specified final point case, the center of
the square (0, 0) need not be within the smallest rectangle
made by the agents along the reference frame after the LP
solution is implemented.
Proof: This can be prove through an example. Let us con-
sider three agents with positions and orientations [(1, 1), 45°],
[(5, 4), 135°], and [(2, 6), −45°] and the specified meeting
point is (0, 0). After executing the LP, the broadcast command
is (θ = 1.37°, d = 1.44). Therefore, the agents will move
to new positions [(2, 2.04), 46.37°], [(3.95, 5), 136.37°], and
[(3.04, 5), −43.63°]. The center of the square is at (0, 0) and
the length of its side is 5 (Fig. 10). Note that the origin (0, 0)
is outside of the smallest rectangle containing all the agents
and aligned along the reference frame.
Property 3: The side length of the square (2r g ), in case of
specified rendezvous point, is greater than or equal to the side
length of the square in case of nonspecified rendezvous point,
i.e., r g ≥ r for the same initial positions and orientations of
the agents.
Proof: This can be easily proved by observing that the
solution of the LP with the specified rendezvous point will sat-
isfy all the constraints of the LP with nonspecified rendezvous
point. This can be seen from (11)–(13) to (23)–(25). Thus, the
solution of the LP for the nonspecified rendezvous point will
yield a solution which is at least as good as the solution for
the specified rendezvous point.
In the specified final point case also, no further improvement
of the performance (i.e., reduction in r g ) can be achieved by
repeated use of the LP algorithm when the angles are not
perturbed.
Theorem 4: For k ≥ 2, u ∗1,k = u ∗2,k = 0 and pi,k+1 = pi,k .
Proof: The proof is similar to Theorem 2.
To reduce r g further a perturbation in the orientation of
the agents is required. Therefore, the agents receive broadcast
command containing the LP solution and a command to
randomly perturb the final orientation angle after the LP
solution is implemented.
VI. S ELECTIVE E NABLING OF AGENTS
In the formulation given in the previous section, when the
number of agents is high, LP will take a longer time to
bring the agents close. However, in case of smaller number
of agents the convergence time is also small. Hence, in case
of higher number of agents, for faster convergence, if one
can choose a group of smaller number of agents at each step
and execute LP for that group, then it may be possible to
bring a large number of agents to a point in a small time.
This is the motivation behind the selective enabling approach
in which a selected subset of agents are enabled to execute
the LP command. The choice of the agents that belong to
the subset at each step was made by a flag setting approach.
Diller et al. [11], [12], [35] deal with remotely addressable
magnetically actuated microrobots that have their magnetic
moments selectively turned ON or OFF by application of a large
magnetic field pulse. This is conceptually similar to the idea
used here. Although the objective of switching the magnetic
field in their work is different from what we propose here.
The main idea behind this approach is that each agent ai
randomly generates a flag f i , that can take one of two values.
One is high ( f h ), denoting an active agent, and the other is
low ( fl ), denoting a passive agent. The set of agents that have
high flags (active) is denoted by Ra and the set of agents that
have low flags (passive) denoted by R p .
At time t let the set of active agents be Ra (t) = {i | f i = fh }
and the set of passive agents at time t be R p (t) = {i | fi = fl },
where i ∈ {1, . . . , n}. An active agent will implement the
broadcast command and change its state, whereas a passive
agent will ignore the command and remain stationary. The
flag value for each agent may or may not be observed by
the CC. The CC has information of position and orientation
of all the agents (active and passive) at each step. The control
command (u ∗1 , u ∗2 ) computed by the CC will be broadcast to
all the agents, but only the active agents will move.
Let the position and orientation of the active and passive
agents be ( pa,k , θa,k ) and ( p p,k , θ p,k ), respectively. After
receiving the broadcast command the new positions of the
active and passive agents are
⎡ ⎤
cos θi,a,k − sin θi,a,k 0
pi,a,k+1 = pi,a,k + ⎣ sin θi,a,k cos θi,a,k 0 ⎦
0 0 1
⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤
cos θ − sin θ 0 d
× ⎣ sin θ cos θ 0 ⎦ ⎣ 0 ⎦ (26)
0 0 1 θ
pi, p,k+1 = pi, p,k (27)
where (θ, d) is the broadcast control command.
A. Algorithms
In this section, we propose five different algorithms obtained
by combining the two randomization mechanisms described in
the previous section in different ways. Their relations with
each other are shown in Fig. 11 and the algorithms are
described as follows.
1) Perturbation (P): This is the basic perturbation
algorithm described in the previous section.
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
Fig. 11. Taxonomy of the randomization mechanism-based algorithm.
TABLE I
M AIN F EATURES OF A LL THE A LGORITHMS (Y = Y ES ; N = N O )
2) Flag Observed (FO ): In this case, the flags of the agents
will be set randomly but the orientation will not be perturbed.
The CC will observe the flags as well as the positions
and orientations of all the agents and compute the control
command for the active agents only. The CC will broadcast
control command and all active agents will move from their
respective positions. Thus
agents will change their state. The passive agents will remain
L( pi1,a,k , pi2,a,k , θi,a,k ) = u ∗1 , u ∗2 . (28)
Note that in this case, there is no perturbation in the agent
orientation. Even then, the LP may give nonzero solution
at each step. This is because the group of active agents is
different at each step due to random flag setting.
3) Algorithm (FN ): In this case too, the flags of the agents
will be set randomly and orientation will not be perturbed.
However, unlike the (FO ) case, the CC will not observe the
flags and will only observe positions and orientations of all
the agents and compute the control command for all of them.
The CC will broadcast the control command to all the agents,
but only the active agents will implement these and move.
Thus
L(( pi1,a,k , pi2,a,k , θi,a,k ), ( pi1, p,k , pi2, p,k , θ p,k )) = u ∗1 , u ∗2 .
(29)
Even here, although there is no perturbation in the orientation,
the LP may give nonzero solution at each step as the group
of active agents is different due to random flag setting.
1815
4) Perturbation With Flag Observed (P, FO ): In this case,
the active agents in Ra (t), whose flag is high, will perturb its
orientation randomly. Then, the CC will observe the positions,
orientations, and flags of all the agents. However, the LP will
be executed using the position and orientation of the active
agents only. The control command will be broadcast to all the
agents. After receiving the control command only the active
stationary. Thus
L( pi1,a,k , pi2,a,k , θ̂i,a,k ) = u ∗1 , u ∗2 (30)
where θ̂i,a,k = θi,a,k + νa,k .
5) Perturbation With Flag Not Observed (P, FN ): In this
case also, the active agents will perturb their orientations
randomly. However, the CC will not observe the flag infor-
mation and will compute the control command (θ, d) using
positions and orientations of both the active agents and passive
agents. The control command will be broadcast and only
the active agents will move from their respective positions.
Thus
L(( pi1,a,k , pi2,a,k , θ̂i,a,k )( pi1, p,k , pi2, p,k , θ̂i, p,k )) = u ∗1 , u ∗2
(31)
where θ̂i,a,k = θi,a,k + νa,k .
The main features of the above algorithms are summarized
in a tabular form in Table I.
1816 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 12. Consensus with three agents. (a) Trajectory of the agents. (b) Zoomed-in view of the ending locations of the agents. (c) r versus iteration.
(d) Convergence in the X-coordinate. (e) Convergence in the Y -coordinate. (f) θ versus d (number shows the iteration number).
VII. S IMULATION R ESULTS
This section gives simulation result for all the cases
discussed previously and provides very important insights
into the broadcast-based algorithm. All the simulations have
been carried out in a computer with Intel Core 2 CPU,
1.86 GHz, and 3-GB RAM.
A. Nonspecified Point Consensus
In the first set of simulations, we consider three agents
with initial conditions [(1, 1), 45°], [(5, 4), 135°], and
[(2, 6), −45°] as the initial position and orientation angle
of the three agents. Using the perturbation technique, with
normal distribution for η and a scaling angle of β = 120°, the
agents converge to a point after a few iterations (Fig. 12). The
variation in the X and Y coordinates of the three agents against
the number of iterations are also shown. The convergence
criterion for terminating the simulation was the value of r
becomes <0.01 (denoted by rt ). The variations of d against
θ are also shown in Fig. 12(e), where the agents are seen
to move by infinitesimally small distances but changing their
heading drastically.
In Fig. 13, we plot the average number of iterations needed,
and the average length of path traveled by each agent, as a
function of the scaling angle β for the two cases when the
random number η is generated by a uniform distribution or
by a normal distribution using the same variance (0.33) for
both the cases. These results are given for three agents and
obtained by averaging over 200 trials. From these results,
we conclude that using larger scaling angle reduces r faster
and yields shorter path lengths. It can also be observed
that the performance of the normal distribution and uniform
distribution are similar. In the rest of this paper, we will use
only normal distribution.
It is obvious that the computation time and the number
of iterations should rise with the number of agents. This is
expected since the complexity of the algorithm is the same as
that of the LP algorithm. This can also be observed in Fig. 14,
where the half length of the square after 300 iterations has been
plotted against the number of agents. As the number of agents
increases, the rate of convergence of the algorithm decreases
substantially.
In Table II, the effort required by the agents as they move
toward the rendezvous point is given. The results are given
for a three agents case. The first column gives the sum of the
distances traveled by each robot up to the kth iteration. This is
a measure of the rectilinear motion effort by the robots. Note
that multiplication by the number of robots n(= 3) is done
because the distance moved by each robot at each iteration is
the same for each robot. Similarly, the second column gives
the sum of the angular rotations in degrees executed by each
robot up to the kth iteration and represents the rotational effort
by the robots. The third column represents the sum (summed
over the number of robots) of the Euclidean distance covered
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM 1817

Fig. 13. Convergence results for three agents. (a) Average number of iterations. (b) Standard deviations for number of iterations: uniform distribution.
(c) Standard deviations for number of iterations: normal distribution. (d) Average length of path. (e) Standard deviations for path length: uniform distribution.
(f) Standard deviations for path length: normal distribution.

TABLE II
R ECTILINEAR AND ROTATIONAL E FFORT BY ROBOTS (AVERAGE H AS
TAKEN OVER 200 S IMULATIONS )

Fig. 14. r versus number of agents after 300 iterations.

by each robot from its  initial position at the kth iteration

and is given by D = ni=1 Dik , where Dik is the Euclidean
distance of the agent i at the kth iteration, from its initial
position. This is not a measure of the effort by the robots
but can be used as benchmark to ascertain how much actual
displacement from their initial positions is achieved by the
robots. The table shows that after the first few iterations,
the displacement achieved, denoted by D, and the rectilinear
motion effort retains a linear relationship, while the angular or implemented by a randomly selected subset containing
effort keeps rising at a rapid rate. This shows that as the robots increasing number of agents. For example, in the first instance,
get closer to the rendezvous point there is a tendency by them only one randomly selected agent executes the LP at each
to rotate by large angles. iteration till rendezvous is achieved. The agent, which executes
Next, a simulation is done with 10 agents in which the LP, is selected randomly at each iteration. Similarly, in
although the LP is solved for all the agents, it is executed the next simulation, two agents are randomly selected at each
1818 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 15. Number of iterations versus fixed number of randomly chosen active
agents.
iteration. In Fig. 15, the number of iterations to converge for
each number of randomly selected agents is given. It can be
observed that the required number of iterations decreases up
to a certain number of agents, after which it increases. Hence,
it appears that the number of agents implementing the LP
solution is an important factor in determining the speed of
convergence of the algorithm. We will show other results with
similar ideas when we address the selective enabling class of
problems later in this section. However, it would be prudent
to note that the number of agents chosen to be in the subset
of active agents is fixed here, although the agents themselves
are selected randomly. In the selective enabling case, this
number cannot be enforced as each agent chooses to be active
or inactive based upon its own randomized algorithm.
B. Specified Consensus Point
To demonstrate that the agents can meet at any prespecified
point, we consider the initial positions and orientation angles
as [(1, 1), 45°], [(5, 4), 135°], and [(2, 6), −45°] for the three
agents. The meeting point is set as the origin (0, 0). The results
are given in Fig. 16. Comparing with Fig. 12(b), which had the
same initial conditions and did not have a specified rendezvous
point, we can observe that the initial square in the specified
point case is expectedly larger and also takes a larger number
of iterations to converge. The simulation results with 20 agents
is given in Fig. 17. It is seen that even after 3000 iterations the
agents do not converge to a point but the value of r reduces
from 7.5 to 3 in less than 1000 iterations.
C. Performance Comparison Between LP and SOCP
Bretl [4] formulates the robot gathering problem as an
optimization problem that minimizes the radius of the disc.
The proposed algorithm was solved using the SOCP tech-
nique [5]–[7], which is a nonlinear programming technique
and is computationally time intensive. On the other hand, the
robot gathering problem in our work was formulated using
an LP approach, which has better convergence properties in
standard problems, especially with smaller number of robots.
In this section, a comparison between algorithms based on
SOCP and LP technique is presented for this problem for
the nonspecified rendezvous point case. The problem formu-
lation with perturbation was used in both cases. Only the
determination of the next position of the agents was decided
by LP in one case and by SOCP in another. Initially, the
number of agents considered was three. The perturbation was
done using normal distribution and the average was taken over
200 simulation runs. Table III and Fig. 18 give a comparison
between the computation time of LP and SOCP for different
scaling angles used for implementing the perturbation. It can
be seen that the SOCP-based algorithm takes a considerably
longer time than the LP-based algorithm.
The comparison between LP and SOCP in terms of number
of iterations taken to converge has been done using a scaling
angle of 120°. The number of iterations taken to converge as
the number of agents varies and the corresponding time taken
to converge is given in Table IV. The number of iterations
and computation times were averaged over 200 simulations.
Fig. 19 gives a plot of the average computation time and
the standard deviations. It shows that the LP-based broadcast
algorithm performs better than SOCP.
D. Selective Enabling Approach
The simulation results for the basic perturbation-based
broadcast algorithm (which was denoted by P) was discussed
in the previous section.
We now consider Algorithm FO , in which the CC observes
the flag values and there is no perturbation in orientation. Here,
five agents were considered to demonstrate the result. The
convergence criterion for terminating the simulation is r ≤ 0.1.
The simulation results are given in Fig. 20 and show that the
agents do not converge to a point. In fact, they seem to be
sometimes moving away from each other. The reason for this is
that the CC computes the control command based on the active
agents’ information only and the computation is independent
of the passive agents’ information. This implies that the active
agents move to a point defined by the LP solution without
taking into consideration the presence of the passive agents.
This leads to the active agents moving away from the passive
agents. Therefore, after repeatedly using this algorithm, the
agents do not converge to a point.
Next, Algorithm FN is considered, in which the CC does
not observe the flags and there is no perturbation of angles.
Here, 5, 10, 15, and 20 agents have been considered. The
simulation results are given in Fig. 21. The log scale plot
shows the details for the smaller number of iterations with
greater clarity and shows that the value of r need not decrease
monotonically. The agents converge to a point for up to
15 agents. The simulation results also show that this algorithm
does not work for 20 agents and higher but it still gives better
result than algorithm P and substantially better result than FO
since it moves the passive agents in a way that keeps them
close to the active agents.
Next, Algorithm (P, FO ) is considered. Note that in this
case, the control command is computed by considering only
the active agents. For simulation, five agents are considered.
The simulation result is given in Fig. 22. The simulation results
show that the agents do not converge to a point even for small
number of agents. The reason is the same, as discussed in the
FO algorithm.
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM 1819

Fig. 16. Consensus with three agents at specified point. (a) Trajectory of the agents. (b) r versus iteration.

Fig. 17. LP with 20 agents. (a) Trajectory of the agents. (b) Zoomed-in view of the ending locations of the agents. (c) r versus iteration.

TABLE III
C OMPUTATION T IMES OF LP- AND SOCP-BASED B ROADCAST
A LGORITHM W ITH T HREE A GENTS FOR D IFFERENT S CALING
A NGLES (AVERAGE H AS TAKEN OVER 200 S IMULATIONS )

Fig. 18. Comparison of computation times of LP- and SOCP-based broadcast

algorithm with three agents for different scaling angles.

Next, Algorithm (P, FN ) is considered. The CC does not

observe the flags and considers all the agents, while computing
the control command. Here, 5, 10, 15, and 20 agents were
considered for the simulation. The results are given in Fig. 23.
We also observe that this algorithm is able to bring higher agents in the LP computation keeps the agent swarm together.
number of agents to a point. The reason why this algorithm Thus, not having access to the flag information (by the CC)
works better than (P, FO ) is that consideration of the passive actually helps in better convergence.
1820 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015

TABLE IV
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN LP- AND SOCP-BASED B ROADCAST A LGORITHM IN T ERMS OF N UMBER OF I TERATIONS AND
C OMPUTATION T IMES (AVERAGE H AS TAKEN OVER 200 S IMULATIONS )

Fig. 19. Comparison based on computation time and number of interactions between the LP- and SOCP-based algorithms.

Fig. 20. Algorithm FO . (a) Zoomed-in view of the starting positions. (b) Trajectory of the agents. (c) r versus iterations.

Fig. 21. Algorithm FN . (a) r versus number of iterations in log scale. (b) r versus number of iterations in linear scale. (c) Trajectory for five agents.

It is quite evident that not all the algorithms are able to bring terms of the number of iterations and computation times for
the agents to a point. Table V shows performance comparison 5, 10, 15, 20, 50, and 100 agents. Here, we consider rt = 0.1.
of all the algorithms, for unspecified rendezvous point, in Note that NC denotes those cases, where r is not less than
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM 1821

Fig. 22. Algorithm (P, FO ). (a) r versus number of iteration. (b) Trajectory of the agents.

Fig. 23. Algorithm (P, FN ). (a) r versus number of iterations in log scale. (b) r versus number of iterations in linear scale. (c) Trajectory for five agents.

TABLE V
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN A LGORITHMS FOR D IFFERENT N UMBER OF A GENTS W ITH U NSPECIFIED R ENDEZVOUS P OINT (AVERAGE WAS
TAKEN OVER 200 S IMULATIONS , rt = 0.1, I NITIALLY, THE ROBOTS W ERE D ISTRIBUTED IN 10 × 10 W INDOW )

rt after 10 000 iterations. From the above results one can Algorithms P and FN . When the number of agents is 50 or
conclude that the algorithms P, FN , and (P, FN ) are able more, none of the algorithms seem to converge.
to bring the agents to a point. However, for higher number Next, to demonstrate the algorithm’s performance for the
of agents, for instance 20, Algorithm (P, FN ) is superior to case when the agents are required to meet at a prespecified
1822 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015

Fig. 24. Final point is specified. (a) r versus number of iterations in linear scale. (b) r versus number of iterations in log scale. (c)–(g) Trajectories for the
five agents case. (c) Algorithm P. (d) Algorithm (P, FO ). (e) Algorithm (P, FN ). (f) Algorithm FO . (g) Algorithm FN .

TABLE VI
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN A LGORITHMS FOR D IFFERENT N UMBER A GENTS W ITH S PECIFIED R ENDEZVOUS P OINT (AVERAGE WAS
TAKEN OVER 200 S IMULATIONS , rt = 0.1, I NITIALLY, THE ROBOTS W ERE D ISTRIBUTED IN 10 × 10 W INDOW )

point, five agents were considered. Here, the meeting point is
specified as (0, 0). The trajectories are given in Fig. 24.
Table VI gives comparison of the number of iterations and
of the computations time between the algorithms for 5, 10,
15, and 20 agents, respectively, when the meeting point is
specified. The results show that even for large number of
agents, Algorithms (P, FO ) and FO take fewer iterations to
converge. This is in contrast to the results when the final
rendezvous point was not specified. The reason for this is that
since the final point is specified, even a subset of the agents
for which the LP is executed tends to always move toward
the specified point. Since this point is fixed and is always
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
Fig. 25. Hardware architecture.
Fig. 26. LEGO NXT mobile robot. (a) Without markers. (b) With markers.
included in the LP formulation at each iteration, it serves to
make the agents move toward it, thus avoiding the phenomena
of spreading in arbitrary directions. On the other hand, when
Algorithm FN is used, the LP is always executed for all the
agents (i.e., a larger number of agents, as compared with the
FO case, which executes the LP only for the active agents)
thus leading to a significant slowing down of the convergence
rate.
VIII. E XPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
The hardware architecture for implementing the broadcast-
based consensus algorithm is shown in Fig. 25. The hardware
consists of mainly four parts: a team of three LEGO
Mindstorms NXT mobile robots, a laptop, a Bluetooth adapter,
and two cameras. The core of all the robots is NXT brick
that consist of a microprocessor equipped with computation
capabilities, motor actuation, and Bluetooth communication.
The left and right wheel of the robots are driven by two
servomotors independently. A third wheel acts as a third
support and it rotates freely. This implies that the robots are
of differential-drive kinematics type. Two rectangular markers
(different in size) are put on the top of the robots (Fig. 26).
This allows visual detection using cameras.
A laptop provided the necessary processing power and
communication capabilities. MATLAB was used for all
the computations. The laptop used a Bluetooth adapter to
communicate to the LEGO robots. Two cameras are attached
1823
with the laptop, one of which is used for robot detection
and the other is used to provide online streaming video of
the experiment. The software architecture of the experiment
has various components, such as high-level robot control,
low-level robot control, and robot detection and robot com-
munication [36]. The high-level control is performed in the
laptop for all the computations related to the algorithms.
The algorithm was implemented using MATLAB. The
MATLAB Image Acquisition Toolbox was used to capture
and process the images [37]. The captured images were
processed to extract the rectangular markers on the top of the
robots. Before starting the experiments, offline camera cal-
ibration was performed using MATLAB Camera Calibration
Toolbox [38], [39]. The low-level robot control was done using
Not eXactly C (NXC) [40] programming. The NXC codes are
placed in the microprocessor of each vehicle. The low-level
control was decomposed into two tasks, which run in parallel.
The first of which checks whether there are any incoming
messages from the CC (the laptop) via Bluetooth connection.
If there are any messages, then the messages will pass to
the second task. The second task controls the rotation of the
two wheels. The communication between the robots (NXT)
and CC has been done through the Bluetooth adapter. The
Rheinsch-Westfälisehe Techniche Hosehsehule—Mindstorms
NXT Toolbox for MATLAB [41] has been used for wireless
communication. This communication has been used for send-
ing commands for rotation of the wheel and receiving health
monitoring data from NXT robots (for instance, battery-level
information).
In Fig. 27, some snapshots of the experiment are shown.
This experiment was carried out for the broadcast consensus
algorithm to bring the vehicles to a desired point. In Fig. 27(a),
the robots are at their initial position and orientation. In
Fig. 27(b), the robots have turned by the command angle
θ after receiving the broadcast command. In Fig. 27(c), the
robots have advanced by the distance d, thus coming closer
to each other. Although the experiment shows only one step
of the algorithm it validates the implementability of the
algorithm. In Fig. 28, two step of an experiment is shown.
One of the challenges in implementing the broadcast-based
consensus algorithm with nonspecified rendezvous point is that
for small number of agents the LP solution may come up
with a value of d that would be large and can take the robots
out of the controlled laboratory space. One could to either
ignore the solution and execute the LP again after perturbing
the orientations a second time, or one could implement the
algorithm using a fixed fraction of the computed value of d.
The second approach is suboptimal but serves to reduce the
size of the square. This can be proved using the reasoning
employed in the proof of Theorem 3. Of course, this problem
is unlikely to appear when the number of agents is large.
Other challenges such as communication between CC and
robots, obtaining the coordinates (position and orientation) of
the agents also need to be solved. The above experiment imple-
ments only the basic algorithm P. There are some additional
technical and implementation challenges that will arise when
implementing the others algorithms. For example, identifying
if the agent is active or passive, dynamics of the agents, and
1824 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 23, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2015

Fig. 27. Snapshot from experiment results. (a) Initial positions of the robot. (b) After implementing θ . (c) After implementing d.

Fig. 28. Snapshot from experiment results. (a) Initial positions of the robot. (b) After implementing θ1 . (c) After implementing d1 . (d) After perturbation
in the orientation. (e) After implementing θ2 . (f) After implementing d2 .

noise in measurements are important challenges. The first can
be implemented using some LED lights on the top of each
robot to indicate their flag values, which are identified using
standard image processing techniques. A point of concern is
that, in practical implementations, the crisscrossing behavior of
the agent paths can lead to wasteful power/fuel consumption,
but given the basic premise of broadcast control, this seems
to be inevitable.
IX. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, the problem of controlling a group of agents
to converge at a location using only broadcast control input
(i.e., identical control) for all the agents has been considered.
The results show that it is possible for a group of agents
to meet at a location, or come very close to each other,
by sending them a sequence of simple and exactly identical
instructions. The location point may also be prespecified.
We were able to show that introducing a perturbation in
the orientations of the agents helps to dislodge the agents
from a local minimum point and allows the algorithm to
look for a better solution. Repetition of this process helps
in achieving consensus. We also proposed a novel LP-based
solution approach that is computationally less intensive than
the SOCP technique proposed in the literature. The algorithms
DAS AND GHOSE: BROADCAST CONTROL MECHANISM
were tested successfully on a real multirobot testbed made
using LEGO Mindstorms NXT mobile robots.
There are several opportunities for future work in this
direction. An interesting theoretical work could be to esti-
mate the expected value of the number of iterations or rate
of convergence of the various algorithms using Lyapunov
analysis (similar to [20]). As can be seen, these algorithms
yield almost point convergence for up to about 20 agents,
but for larger number of agents the proximity measure r
does not reduce beyond a certain value. Establishing lower
bounds on r as a function of the number of agents could
be another interesting theoretical work. It seems possible to
extend this paper to consider process noise, sensor uncer-
tainty, the presence of obstacles in the environment, and
incorporating collision avoidance. The collision avoidance
can possibly be implemented in the robotic platform using
proximity sensors on the robots so that robots can be made
to execute a collision avoidance maneuver when they come
closer than a certain prespecified distance of other robots. It
is also possible to extend this paper to higher dimensions.
This paper can be implemented in Nanorobots, UAVs, and
so on. However, the details of the implementations could be
interesting areas for future research. Again, it would be a very
interesting future research work to compare the convergence
rate between the constrained case of having a fixed meeting
point and the unconstrained case of an arbitrary meeting
point.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their
perceptive comments which have helped to improve this
paper.
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Debasish Ghose received the B.Sc. (Eng.) degree
from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela,
India, in 1982, and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from
the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore,
India, in 1984 and 1990, respectively.
He has held visiting positions at the University
of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA,
USA, and several other universities. He is currently a
Professor with the Department of Aerospace Engi-
neering, IISc. He has authored a book entitled
Scheduling Divisible Loads in Parallel and Distrib-
uted Systems (Wiley, 1996). His current research interests include guidance
and control of aerospace vehicles, collective robotics, multiple agent decision-
makings, distributed decision-making systems, and scheduling problems in
distributed computing systems.
Dr. Ghose is a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
He is also on the Editorial Board of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
A EROSPACE and E LECTRONIC S YSTEMS .

Kaushik Das received the B.E. degree in electrical

engineering from the Indian Institute of Engineering
Science and Technology, Shibpur, India, in 2003,
the M.E. degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata,
India, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree from the Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2014.
He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Uni-
versity of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA,
from 2013 to 2014. His current research interests
include distributed algorithm, multirobot system, and
autonomous system and control theory.