Finite-time Prescribed Performance Time-Varying Formation Control for Second-Order Multi-Agent Systems With Non-Strict Feedback Based on a Neural Network Observer

This paper studies the problem of time-varying formation control with finite-time prescribed performance for nonstrict feedback second-order multi-agent systems with unmeasured states and unknown nonlinearities.To eliminate nonlinearities,neural networks are applied to approximate the inherent dynamics of the system.In addition,due to the limitations of the actual working conditions,each follower agent can only obtain the locally measurable partial state information of the leader agent.To address this problem,a neural network state observer based on the leader state information is designed.Then,a finite-time prescribed performance adaptive output feedback control strategy is proposed by restricting the sliding mode surface to a prescribed region,which ensures that the closed-loop system has practical finite-time stability and that formation errors of the multi-agent systems converge to the prescribed performance bound in finite time.Finally,a numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the developed algorithm.

Leader trajectory planning method considering constraints of formation controller

To ensure safe flight of multiple fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)formation,considering trajectory planning and formation control together,a leader trajectory planning method based on the sparse A*algorithm is introduced.Firstly,a formation controller based on prescribed performance theory is designed to control the transient and steady formation configuration,as well as the formation forming time,which not only can form the designated formation configuration but also can guarantee collision avoidance and terrain avoidance theoretically.Next,considering the constraints caused by formation controller on trajectory planning such as the safe distance,turn angle and step length,as well as the constraint of formation shape,a leader trajectory planning method based on sparse A^(*)algorithm is proposed.Simulation results show that the UAV formation can arrive at the destination safely with a short trajectory no matter keeping the formation or encountering formation transformation.

Cyclic-Pursuit-Based Circular Formation Control of Mobile Agents with Limited Communication Ranges and Communication Delays

This article addresses the circular formation control problem of a multi-agent system moving on a circle in the presence of limited communication ranges and communication delays.To minimize the number of communication links,a novel distributed controller based on a cyclic pursuit strategy is developed in which each agent needs only its leading neighbour’s information.In contrast to existing works,we propose a set of new potential functions to deal with heterogeneous communication ranges and communication delays simultaneously.A new framework based on the admissible upper bound of the formation error is established so that both connectivity maintenance and order preservation can be achieved at the same time.It is shown that the multi-agent system can be driven to the desired circular formation as time goes to infinity under the proposed controller.Finally,the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by some simulation examples.

Spatial-Temporal Distribution, Geological Characteristics and Ore-Formation Controlling Factors of Major Types of Rare Metal Mineral Deposits in China

Rare metals including Lithium(Li),Beryllium(Be),Rubidium(Rb),Cesium(Cs),Zirconium(Zr),Hafnium(Hf),Niobium(Nb),Tantalum(Ta),Tungsten(W)and Tin(Sn)are important critical mineral resources.In China,rare metal mineral deposits are spatially distributed mainly in the Altay and Southern Great Xingán Range regions in the Central Asian orogenic belt;in the Middle Qilian,South Qinling and East Qinling mountains regions in the Qilian-Qinling-Dabie orogenic belt;in the Western Sichuan and Bailongshan-Dahongliutan regions in the Kunlun-Songpan-Garze orogenic belt,and in the Northeastern Jiangxi,Northwestern Jiangxi,and Southern Hunan regions in South China.Major ore-forming epochs include Indosinian(mostly 200-240 Ma,in particular in western China)and the Yanshanian(mostly 120-160 Ma,in particular in South China).In addition,Bayan Obo,Inner Mongolia,northeastern China,with a complex formation history,hosts the largest REE and Nb deposits in China.There are six major rare metal mineral deposit types in China:Highly fractionated granite;Pegmatite;Alkaline granite;Carbonatite and alkaline rock;Volcanic;and Hydrothermal types.Two further types,namely the Leptynite type and Breccia pipe type,have recently been discovered in China,and are represented by the Yushishan Nb-Ta-(Zr-Hf-REE)and the Weilasituo Li-Rb-Sn-W-Zn-Pb deposits.Several most important controlling factors for rare metal mineral deposits are discussed,including geochemical behaviors and sources of the rare metals,highly evolved magmatic fractionation,and structural controls such as the metamorphic core complex setting,with a revised conceptual model for the latter.

Leader-following consensus protocols for formation control of multi-agent network

Two protocols are presented,which can make agents reach consensus while achieving and preserving the desired formation in fixed topology with and without communication timedelay for multi-agent network.First,the protocol without considering the communication time-delay is presented,and by using Lyapunov stability theory,the sufficient condition of stability for this multi-agent system is presented.Further,considering the communication time-delay,the effectiveness of the protocol based on Lyapunov-Krasovskii function is demonstrated.The main contribution of the proposed protocols is that,as well as the velocity consensus is considered,the formation control is concerned for multi-agent systems described as the second-order equations.Finally,numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.

Distributed formation control for a multi-agent system with dynamic and static obstacle avoidances

Formation control and obstacle avoidance for multi-agent systems have attracted more and more attention. In this paper, the problems of formation control and obstacle avoidance are investigated by means of a consensus algorithm. A novel distributed control model is proposed for the multi-agent system to form the anticipated formation as well as achieve obstacle avoidance. Based on the consensus algorithm, a distributed control function consisting of three terms （formation control term, velocity matching term, and obstacle avoidance term） is presented. By establishing a novel formation control matrix, a formation control term is constructed such that the agents can converge to consensus and reach the anticipated formation. A new obstacle avoidance function is developed by using the modified potential field approach to make sure that obstacle avoidance can be achieved whether the obstacle is in a dynamic state or a stationary state. A velocity matching term is also put forward to guarantee that the velocities of all agents converge to the same value. Furthermore, stability of the control model is proven. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control.

A Novel Multi-agent Formation Control Law With Collision Avoidance

In this paper a stable formation control law that simultaneously ensures collision avoidance has been proposed.It is assumed that the communication graph is undirected and connected.The proposed formation control law is a combination of the consensus term and the collision avoidance term(CAT).The first order consensus term is derived for the proposed model,while ensuring the Lyapunov stability.The consensus term creates and maintains the desired formation shape,while the CAT avoids the collision.During the collision avoidance,the potential function based CAT makes the agents repel from each other.This unrestricted repelling magnitude cannot ensure the graph connectivity at the time of collision avoidance.Hence we have proposed a formation control law,which ensures this connectivity even during the collision avoidance.This is achieved by the proposed novel adaptive potential function.The potential function adapts itself,with the online tuning of the critical variable associated with it.The tuning has been done based on the lower bound of the critical variable,which is derived from the proposed connectivity property.The efficacy of the proposed scheme has been validated using simulations done based on formations of six and thirty-two agents respectively.

Formation Control for Water-Jet USV Based on Bio-Inspired Method

The formation control problem for underactuated unmanned surface vehicles(USVs) is addressed by a distributed strategy based on virtual leader strategy. The control system takes account of disturbance induced by external environment. With the coordinate transformation, the advantage of the proposed scheme is that the control point can be any point of the ship instead of the center of gravity. By introducing bio-inspired model, the formation control problem is addressed with backstepping method. This avoids complicated computation, simplifies the control law,and smoothes the input signals. The system uniform ultimate boundness is proven by Lyapunov stability theory with Young inequality. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness and robust of the proposed controller.

A Scalable Adaptive Approach to Multi-Vehicle Formation Control with Obstacle Avoidance

This paper deals with the problem of distributed formation tracking control and obstacle avoidance of multivehicle systems(MVSs)in complex obstacle-laden environments.The MVS under consideration consists of a leader vehicle with an unknown control input and a group of follower vehicles,connected via a directed interaction topology,subject to simultaneous unknown heterogeneous nonlinearities and external disturbances.The central aim is to achieve effective and collisionfree formation tracking control for the nonlinear and uncertain MVS with obstacles encountered in formation maneuvering,while not demanding global information of the interaction topology.Toward this goal,a radial basis function neural network is used to model the unknown nonlinearity of vehicle dynamics in each vehicle and repulsive potentials are employed for obstacle avoidance.Furthermore,a scalable distributed adaptive formation tracking control protocol with a built-in obstacle avoidance mechanism is developed.It is proved that,with the proposed protocol,the resulting formation tracking errors are uniformly ultimately bounded and obstacle collision avoidance is guaranteed.Comprehensive simulation results are elaborated to substantiate the effectiveness and the promising collision avoidance performance of the proposed scalable adaptive formation control approach.

Fixed-time Sliding Mode Formation Control of AUVs Based on a Disturbance Observer

In this paper,we investigate formation tracking control of autonomous underwater vehicles(AUVs)with model parameter uncertainties and external disturbances.The external disturbances due to the wind,waves,and ocean currents are combined with the model parameter uncertainties as a compound disturbance.Then a disturbance observer(DO)is introduced to estimate the compound disturbance,which can be achieved within a finite time independent of the initial estimation error.Based on a DO,a novel fixed-time sliding control scheme is developed,by which the follower vehicle can track the leader vehicle with all the states globally stabilized within a given settling time.The effectiveness and performance of the method are demonstrated by numerical simulations.

The Formation Control of Multi-agent Systems on a Circle

This paper investigates the formation control of a class of multi-agent systems moving on a circle, whose topology is a cyclic graph, and presents several new results for the following two cases: Case I, the agents with single-integrator kinematics,and Case II, the agents with double-integrator kinematics. Firstly,for Case I, two control protocols are proposed under which the multiagent systems keep a uniformly-spaced formation. Secondly,we study Case II, and a control protocol is designed for this case, then the stability of the formation is proved. Finally, three simulations are studied by using our presented results. The study of illustrative examples with simulations shows that our results as well as designed control protocols work very well in studying the formation control of this class of multi-agent systems.

Potential-based obstacle avoidance in formation control

Based on the double integrator mathematic model, a new kind of potential function is presented in this paper by referring to the concepts of the electric field; then a new formation control method is proposed, in which the potential functions are used between agent-agent and between agent-obstacle, while state feedback control is applied for the agent and its goal. This strategy makes the whole potential field simpler and helps avoid some local minima. The stability of this combination of potential functions and state feedback control is proven. Some simulations are presented to show the rationality of this control method.

Leader-following formation control of multi-agent networks based on distributed observers

To investigate the leader-following formation control, in this paper we present the design problem of control protocols and distributed observers under which the agents can achieve and maintain the desired formation from any initial states, while the velocity converges to that of the virtual leader whose velocity cannot be measured by agents in real time. The two cases of switching topologies without communication delay and fixed topology with time-varying communication delay are both considered for multi-agent networks. By using the Lyapunov stability theory, the issue of stability is analysed for multi-agent systems with switching topologies. Then, by considering the time-varying communication delay, the sufficient condition is proposed for the multi-agent systems with fixed topology. Finally, two numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed leader-following formation control protocols.

On the finite horizon Nash equilibrium solution in the differential game approach to formation control

The solvability of the coupled Riccati differential equations appearing in the differential game approach to the formation control problem is vital to the finite horizon Nash equilibrium solution.These equations(if solvable)can be solved numerically by using the terminal value and the backward iteration.To investigate the solvability and solution of these equations the formation control problem as the differential game is replaced by a discrete-time dynamic game.The main contributions of this paper are as follows.First,the existence of Nash equilibrium controls for the discretetime formation control problem is shown.Second,a backward iteration approximate solution to the coupled Riccati differential equations in the continuous-time differential game is developed.An illustrative example is given to justify the models and solution.

Event-triggered leader-following formation control for multi-agent systems under communication faults: application to a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles

The main contribution of this paper is the design of an event-triggered formation control for leader-following consensus in second-order multi-agent systems(MASs)under communication faults.All the agents must follow the trajectories of a virtual leader despite communication faults considered as smooth time-varying delays dependent on the distance between the agents.Linear matrix inequalities(LMIs)-based conditions are obtained to synthesize a controller gain that guarantees stability of the synchronization error.Based on the closed-loop system,an event-triggered mechanism is designed to reduce the control law update and information exchange in order to reduce energy consumption.The proposed approach is implemented in a real platform of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)under communication faults.A comparison between a state-of-the-art technique and the proposed technique has been provided,demonstrating the performance improvement brought by the proposed approach.

Kinematics/Fuzzy Logic Combined Controller for Formation Control of Mobile Robots

A kinematics and fuzzy logic combined formation controller was proposed for leader-follower based formation control using backstepping method in order to accommodate the dynamics of the robot.The kinematics controller generates desired linear and angular velocities for follower robots,which make the configuration of follower robots coverage to the desired.The fuzzy logic controller takes dynamics of the leader and followers into consideration,which is built upon Mamdani fuzzy model.The force and torque acting on robots are described as linguistic variables and also 25 if-then rules are designed.In addition,the fuzzy logic controller adopts the Centroid of Area method as defuzzification strategy and makes robots’actual velocities converge to the expected which is generated by the kinematics controller.The innovation of the kinematics and fuzzy logic combined formation controller presented in the paper is that the perfect velocity tracking assumption is removed and realtime performance of the system is improved.Compared with traditional torque-computed controller,the velocity error convergence time in case of the proposed method is shorter than traditional torque-computed controller.The simulation results validate that the proposed controller can drive robot members to form the desired formation and formation tracking errors which can coverage to a neighborhood of the origin.Additionally,the simulations also show that the proposed method has better velocity convergence performance than traditional torque-computed method.

Dynamic affine formation control of networked under-actuated quad-rotor UAVs with three-dimensional patterns

This paper focuses on the solution to the dynamic affine formation control problem for multiple networked underactuated quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)to achieve a configuration that preserves collinearity and ratios of distances for a target configuration.In particular,it is investigated that the quad-rotor UAVs are steered to track a reference linear velocity while maintaining a desired three-dimensional target formation.Firstly,by integrating the properties of the affine transformation and the stress matrix,the design of the target formation is convenient and applicable for various three-dimensional geometric patterns.Secondly,a distributed control method is proposed under a hierarchical framework.By introducing an intermediary control input for each quad-rotor UAV in the position loop,the necessary thrust input and the desired attitude are extracted.In the attitude loop,the desired attitude represented by the unit quaternion is tracked by the designed torque input.Both conditions of linear velocity unavailability and mutual collision avoidance are also tackled.In terms of Lyapunov theory,it is prooved that the overall closed-loop error system is asymptotically stable.Finally,two illustrative examples are simulated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.

Reduced-Order Observer-Based Leader-Following Formation Control for Discrete-Time Linear Multi-Agent Systems

Formation control of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems using directed switching topology is considered in this work via a reduced-order observer, in which a formation control protocol is proposed under the assumption that each directed communication topology has a directed spanning tree. By utilizing the relative outputs of neighboring agents, a reduced-order observer is designed for each following agent. A multi-step control algorithm is established based on the Lyapunov method and the modified discrete-time algebraic Riccati equation. A sufficient condition is given to ensure that the discrete-time linear multi-agent system can achieve the expected leader-following formation.Finally, numerical examples are provided so as to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.

Cooperative impulsive formation control for networked uncertain Euler–Lagrange systems with communication delays

This paper investigates the cooperative formation problem via impulsive control for a class of networked Euler–Lagrange systems. To reduce the energy consumption and communication frequency, the impulsive control method and cooperative formation control approach are combined. With the consideration of system uncertainties and communication delays among agents, neural networks-based adaptive technique is used for the controller design. Firstly, under the constraint that each agent interacts with its neighbors only at some sampling moments, an adaptive neural-networks impulsive formation control algorithm is proposed for the networked uncertain Euler–Lagrange systems without communication delays. Using Lyapunov stability theory and Laplacian potential function in the graph theory, we conclude that the formation can be achieved by properly choosing the constant control gains. Further, when considering communication delays,a modified impulsive formation control algorithm is proposed, in which the extended Halanay differential inequality is used to analyze the stability of the impulsive delayed dynamical systems. Finally, numerical examples and performance comparisons with continuous algorithm are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Vision-based formation control of mobile robots

In this paper, a formation control algorithm and an obstade avoidance control algorithm for mobile robots are developed based on a relative motion sensory system such as a pan/tilt camera vision system, without the need for global sensing and between robots. This is achieved by employing the velocity variation, instead of actual velocities, as the control inputs. Simulation and experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed control methods.