Pointing consensus for rooted out-branching graphs

Abstract: Given a network of multiple agents, the pointing consensus problem asks all agents to point toward a common target. This paper proposes a simple method to solve the pointing consensus problem in the plane. In our formulation, each agent does not know its own position, but has information about its own heading vector expressed in a common coordinate frame and some desired relative angles to the neighbors. By exchanging the heading vectors via a communication network described by a rooted out-branching graph and controlling the angle between the heading vectors, we show that all agents' heading vectors asymptotically point towards the same target for almost all initial conditions. Simulations are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.