Top-Down Synthesis of Multi-Agent Formation Control: An Eigenstructure Assignment based Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a top-down eigenstructure assignment method for scalable multi-agent formation control, enabling local implementation and extending to rigid formations and circular motions with improved computational efficiency.

Contribution

It presents a novel eigenstructure assignment approach for multi-agent formation control that ensures scalable, locally implementable control strategies with hierarchical synthesis.

Findings

Successfully achieves scalable formations on the plane

Enables local implementation through sparse topologies

Extends to rigid formations and circular motions

Abstract

We propose a top-down approach for formation control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems, based on the method of eigenstructure assignment. Given the problem of achieving scalable formations on the plane, our approach globally computes a state feedback control that assigns desired closed-loop eigenvalues/eigenvectors. We characterize the relation between the eigenvalues/eigenvectors and the resulting inter-agent communication topology, and design special (sparse) topologies such that the synthesized control may be implemented locally by the individual agents. Moreover, we present a hierarchical synthesis procedure that significantly improves computational efficiency. Finally, we extend the proposed approach to achieve rigid formation and circular motion, and illustrate these results by simulation examples.