Title: The effect of leaders on the consistency of group behaviour

Authors: Jianying Zheng; Yan Huang; Yang Xiao

Addresses: The School of Urban Trail Transportation, Soochow University, Suzhou 215021, China. ' The School of Electronics and Information, Suzhou Vocational University, Suzhou 215021, China. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, 101 Houser Hall, Box 870290, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, USA

Abstract: This paper addresses the effects of leaders on the consistency of group behaviour. First, a mathematical model is established so that the group attempts to reach a common velocity direction. The action range of leaders is formulated by their communication range. The followers update their states according to the states of both the other followers in the vicinity and the leaders which can communicate with the current follower. After establishing a system model, we then conduct simulations to discover the effects of leaders on the consistency of a group behaviour. Finally, we obtain the following results: (a) the leader is very useful in compelling the group to be consistent, even when the impact factor of the leader is very small; (b) the total consistency of the group is determined not only by the communication range of the leader, but also by the communication range of the followers.

Keywords: swarm intelligence; leader emergence; group behaviour; leader–follower; coordination control; leaders; communication range; simulation; group consistency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2012.045962

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2012 Vol.11 No.2, pp.126 - 135

Published online: 23 Mar 2012 *

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