Distributed cooperative formation of multiple mobile agents with preserved connectivity

Abstract

This paper investigates distributed cooperative formation control of a group of multiple mobile agents with a virtual leader, where information exchange among agents is modeled by the group topology, and the states of the virtual leader are known only by parts of the agents. We develop a class of distributed formation control laws with similar form. The steered group is proved to achieve the desired formation objectives as long as the intersection of the initial communication topology and the formation goal topology is connected. This requirement of connectivity can be easily achieved by many practical applications; consequently, our developed distributed control laws are effective and feasible. Furthermore, for the developed control laws, we show the influence of different information flow graph of agents on the convergence rate and robustness to node and connection failures.

Keywords

distributed cooperative control / formation / connectivity / stability / LaSalle’s invariance principle