Quantization effects on synchronization of mobile agents with second-order dynamics

This paper studies the quantization effects on the consensus-type schemes for the synchronized motion of teams of mobile agents governed by second-order dynamics. It is shown that when the relative position and velocity information is exchanged between neighboring agents after being quantized by a logarithmic quantizer, the performance of the local coordination scheme hardly deteriorates in steady states. However, it is also pointed out that when a uniform quantizer is not used in the right way, the agents' velocities may grow unboundedly and their positions may never get together. Such different effects of quantization indicate the necessity for a careful selection of quantization strategies especially for multi-agent systems with higher-order agent dynamics. © 2011 IFAC