# Position and Orientation Based Formation Control of Multiple Rigid Bodies with Collision Avoidance and Connectivity Maintenance

## TL;DR

This paper presents a decentralized formation control method for multi-agent systems in 3D space, ensuring formation accuracy, connectivity, and collision avoidance with obstacles using novel potential functions.

## Contribution

It introduces a new decentralized control protocol that maintains connectivity and avoids collisions without requiring detailed agent dynamics knowledge.

## Key findings

- Agents maintain formation with initial neighbors
- Connectivity is preserved throughout the operation
- Collision avoidance with obstacles and workspace boundaries is achieved

## Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of position- and orientation-based formation control of a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems in a $3$D workspace with obstacles. More specifically, we design a decentralized control protocol such that each agent achieves a predefined geometric formation with its initial neighbors, while using local information based on a limited sensing radius. The latter implies that the proposed scheme guarantees that the initially connected agents remain always connected. In addition, by introducing certain distance constraints, we guarantee inter-agent collision avoidance as well as collision avoidance with the obstacles and the boundary of the workspace. The proposed controllers employ a novel class of potential functions and do not require a priori knowledge of the dynamical model, except for gravity-related terms. Finally, simulation results verify the validity of the proposed framework.