Leader–follower formation stabilization and tracking control for heterogeneous planar underactuated vehicle networks

Abstract

In this paper, we solve the distributed leader–follower simultaneous formation stabilization and tracking control problem for heterogeneous planar underactuated vehicle networks without global position measurements of the followers. The vehicles in the network are modeled as generic 3-DOF planar rigid bodies with two control inputs, and are allowed to have identical or non-identical dynamics. By incorporating graph theory, passivity-based control, partial stability theory, Matrosov’s theorem and the persistence of excitation concept, a smooth formation control scheme is proposed to simultaneously address the formation stabilization and formation tracking problems without switching. Moreover, the structure of the controller is relatively simple compared to the existing controllers in the literature, and thus, is practical and easy to implement. Simulations on a group of underactuated vehicles including nonholonomic mobile robots and surface vessels are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.