Directed Distance-Based Formation Control of Nonlinear Heterogeneous Agents in 3-D Space

Abstract

This paper studies distance-based formation control of a set of nonlinear multi-agent systems over directed graphs. We propose a distributed, distance-based formation control scheme for a set of heterogeneous, nonlinear agents over a particular class of minimally, structurally persistent, directed graphs in a 3-D space, namely <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">directed trilateral Laman</i> graphs. The responsibility of controlling each directed edge is assigned to only one of the adjacent agents. The state-dependent Riccati equation is used to design the control method for nonlinear agents. Based on the mathematical induction and stability theory of cascade interconnected systems, we rigorously prove the asymptotic stability of the overall formation. A combination of signed area and volume constraints is used to prevent agents from converging to the flip-ambiguous frameworks in 3-D space. The proposed control law assures collision avoidance between the neighboring pairs of agents. Simulation results are provided to verify the theoretical results.