Decentralized collision avoidance and global connectivity maintenance using nested control barrier functions

This paper proposes a decentralised nested control barrier function (CBF) as a solution for simultaneous collision avoidance and global connectivity maintenance in a multi-agent system. A control barrier function is used to meet multiple control objectives while satisfying certain safety constraints. To incorporate multiple constraints, multiple barrier functions need to be formulated. In this paper, we have developed nested CBF approach, where the functions are hierarchical – the outermost function corresponds to the barrier function with the highest priority. By combining connectivity maintenance and collision avoidance, team of robots can autonomously cooperate to accomplish a user-assigned task. Mathematical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the approach.