ABSTRACT We study the problem of distributed velocity align-ment among a group of nonholonomic agents in 2 and 3 dimensions. Inspired by social aggregation phenomena such as flocking and schooling in birds and fish, we develop vision based control laws for velocity alignment and motion coordination. The proposed control laws are distributed, in the sense that only infor-mation from neighboring agents are included. Furthermore, the control laws are coordinate-free and do not rely on measurement or communication of heading information among neighbors, but instead requires measurements of bearing, optical flow and time-to-collision, all of which can be measured using vision.
