Stability of an asynchronous swarm with time-dependent communication links

Abstract

In this correspondence, we consider a simple model of N interacting agents with fixed or time-dependent communication links. We allow for asynchronous operation and time delays in the information flow. We show that the convergence of the states of the agents to a common value will be achieved, provided that old information is uniformly purged from the system. The considered model finds an application not only in swarming but also in other fields, including synchronization and distributed decision making or consensus seeking.