Cooperative Line Formation Control of Multi-Agent Systems Based on Least Squares Estimation

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of multi-agent systems where each agent aims to establish a line formation in a distributed manner. In constructing an efficient line formation, finding a line with the closest total distance from every agent is essential. We propose a formation control using least squares estimation (LSE) performed by each agent with only the local information that consists of the corresponding agent’s and neighbors’ positions. Each agent calculates the local cost function, which is the squared distance from the LSE line to the related agent’s and its neighbors’ positions. Our goal is to minimize the global cost function, which is the sum of these local cost functions. To achieve this, we employ distributed optimization to the global cost function of the overall system using the subgradient method performed by each agent locally. We evaluate our proposed method using numerical simulation, and the result complies with our goal of this paper