Robotic Herding Using Wavefront Algorithm: Performance and Stability

This paper is concerned with robotic herding of a swarm of birds by another adversarial agent, referred to as the pursuer. The objective of herding is to prevent the birds from entering a specified volume of space, such as the air space around an airport. The n-Wavefront algorithm was introduced by the authors in a prior paper to enable herding of a swarm of birds using a robotic unmanned aerial vehicle. In this paper, the performance and stability characteristics are analyzed using tools from linear and nonlinear stability theory, with the aim of proving its performance and identifying the permissible and optimum values of the control parameters. It is shown that, using the n-Wavefront algorithm, a pursuer can successfully maneuver the birds around the prescribed perimeter while ensuring that the swarm does not undergo fragmentation as a result of its response to the presence of the pursuer.