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

TL;DR

This paper presents a decentralized, model-free control approach for multi-agent systems in 3D space that ensures formation, orientation alignment, collision avoidance, and connectivity maintenance, regardless of model nonlinearities or disturbances.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distance- and orientation-based formation control protocol that is decentralized, model-free, and guarantees collision avoidance and connectivity in 3D multi-agent systems.

Findings

Simulation results confirm effective formation and orientation alignment.

The control protocol is robust to model nonlinearities and disturbances.

Collision avoidance and connectivity are maintained under various conditions.

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of distance- and orientation-based formation control of a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems in 3D space, under static and undirected communication topologies. More specifically, we design a decentralized model-free control protocol in the sense that each agent uses only local information from its neighbors to calculate its own control signal, without incorporating any knowledge of the model nonlinearities and exogenous disturbances. Moreover, the transient and steady state response is solely determined by certain designer-specified performance functions and is fully decoupled by the agents' dynamic model, the control gain selection, the underlying graph topology as well as the initial conditions. Additionally, by introducing certain inter-agent distance constraints, we guarantee collision avoidance and connectivity maintenance between neighboring agents. Finally, simulation results verify the performance of the proposed controllers.