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A new distributed coordination algorithm for multi-vehicle systems is presented in this paper. The algorithm combines a particular choice of navigation function with Voronoi partitions. This results not only in obstacle avoidance and motion to the goal, but also in a desirable geographical distribution of the vehicles. Our algorithm is decentralized in that each vehicle needs only to know the position of neigh boring vehicles, but no other inter-vehicle communication or centralized control are required. The algorithm gives a natural priority to safety, goal convergence, and formation keeping, in that (1) collision avoidance is guaranteed under all circumstances, (2) the vehicles will move toward the goal as long as a given optimization problem is feasible, and (3) if prior criteria admit, the vehicles tend to a desirable lattice formation. These theoretical properties are discussed in the paper and the performance of the algorithm …