Reduction of Necessary Conditions for the Variational Collision Avoidance Problem

Abstract: In this work, we study the reduction by a Lie group of symmetries of variational collision avoidance probelms of multiple agents evolving on a Riemannian manifold and derive necessary conditions for the reduced extremals. The problem consists of finding non-intersecting trajectories of a given number of agents, among a set of admissible curves, to reach a specified configuration, based on minimizing an energy functional that depends on the velocity, covariant acceleration and an artificial potential function used to prevent collision among the agents.