Controlling Swarms toward Flocks and Mills

Self-organization and control around flocks and mills is studied for second-order swarming systems involving self-propulsion and potential terms. It is shown that through the action of constrained control, it is possible to control any initial configuration to a flock or a mill. The proof builds on an appropriate combination of several arguments: the LaSalle invariance principle and Lyapunov-like decreasing functionals, control linearization techniques, and quasi-static deformations. A stability analysis of the second-order system guides the design of feedback laws for the stabilization to flock and mills, which are also assessed computationally.