Effects of Long-Range Connections in Distributed Control of Collective Motion

The introduction of long-range connections in locally connected networks leads to the so-called small-world effect: when few long-range connections are added to the original topology, the characteristic path length decreases, whereas a high clustering coefficient is preserved. In this paper, it is shown that long-range connections introduced in a network model describing the interactions of a group of mobile robots increase the tendency to form a coordinated group of robots which travel in the same direction. The leadership of informed individuals in the group is also increased.