The agreement problem is studied whereby a group of mobile agents achieves convergence to a common point. A hierarchical cyclic pursuit scheme is introduced, and it is shown that this scheme yields a very significant increase in the rate of convergence to a common point when compared to traditional cyclic pursuit. A second scheme is introduced in which there are more communication links between vehicles. It is shown that this scheme produces a rate of convergence greater than the traditional scheme but significantly less than the hierarchical scheme. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.