Multi-agent system for target tracking on a sphere and its asymptotic behavior

Abstract: We propose a second-order multi-agent system for target tracking on a sphere. The model contains a centripetal force, a bonding force, a velocity alignment operator to the target, and cooperative control between flocking agents. We propose an appropriate regularized rotation operator instead of Rodrigues' rotation operator to derive the velocity alignment operator for target tracking. By the regularized rotation operator, we can decompose the phase of agents into translational and structural parts. By analyzing the translational part of this reference frame decomposition, we can obtain rendezvous results to the given target. If the multi-agent system can obtain the target's position, velocity, and acceleration vectors, then the complete rendezvous occurs. Even in the absence of the target's acceleration information, if the coefficients are sufficiently large enough, then the practical rendezvous occurs.