Distributed formation control with relaxed motion requirements

Abstract

Heterogeneous formation shape control with interagent bearing and distance constraints involves the design of a distributed control law that ensures the formation moves such that these interagent constraints are achieved and maintained. This paper looks at the design of a distributed control scheme to solve different formation shape control problems in an ambient two-dimensional space with bearing, distance and mixed bearing and distance constraints. The proposed control law allows the agents in the formation to move in any direction on a half-plane and guarantees that despite this freedom, the proposed shape control algorithm ensures convergence to a formation shape meeting the prescribed constraints. This work provides an interesting and novel contrast to much of the existing work in formation control where distance-only constraints are typically maintained and where each agent's motion is typically restricted to follow a very particular path. A stability analysis is sketched, and a number of illustrative examples are also given.

Defend the practicality of single-integrator models in multi-robot coordination control

“…With a carefully designed projection matrix, the magnitude and direction of the velocity of each robot can be adjusted as required in a distributed manner to handle velocity saturation, obstacle avoidance, and unicycle constraints. This idea is motivated by the recent work in [8], where the authors use a time-varying rotation matrix to adjust the velocity of each robot to realize obstacle and collision avoidance. Compared to [8], our approach is more flexible since it is able to adjust both of the velocity direction and magnitude and is applicable to a wide range of coordination control problems and motion constraints.…”

“…This idea is motivated by the recent work in [8], where the authors use a time-varying rotation matrix to adjust the velocity of each robot to realize obstacle and collision avoidance. Compared to [8], our approach is more flexible since it is able to adjust both of the velocity direction and magnitude and is applicable to a wide range of coordination control problems and motion constraints.…”

A General Approach to Coordination Control of Mobile Agents With Motion Constraints

“…Considering that gradient-descent control laws play an important role in the area of multi-agent coordination control (see [16] and the references therein), we suppose that a gradient control law designed for single integrators in a given coordination task has been obtained. In order to handle motion constraints, motivated by the above observation and a recent work in [17], we modify the gradient control law by introducing a time-varying orthogonal projection matrix and a time-varying scalar to adjust the velocity direction and magnitude, respectively.…”

Robust Distance-Based Formation Control of Multiple Rigid Bodies with Orientation Alignment

“…[Olfati-Saber and Murray, 2002, Smith et al, 2006, Hendrickx et al, 2007, Dimarogonas and Johansson, 2008, Cao et al, 2008, Yu et al, 2009, Krick et al, 2009, Dorfler and Francis, 2010, Oh and Ahn, 2011, Cao et al, 2011, Summers et al, 2011, Park et al, 2012, Belabbas et al, 2012 Orientation-based formation control has been addressed in [Basiri et al, 2010, Eren, 2012, Trinh et al, 2014, Zhao and Zelazo, 2016, whereas the authors in [Trinh et al, 2014, Bishop et al, 2015, Fathian et al, 2016 have considered the combination of distance-and orientationbased formation.…”