Time-varying group formation control for second-order multi-agent systems with switching directed topologies

Abstract

Time-varying group formation control problems for second-order multi-agent systems with switching directed topologies are studied in this paper. All agents in the multi-agent system are divided into subgroups to form pre-defined time-varying sub-formations and the directed topology can be switching which means that group formation and switching topologies are considered together. Firstly, a time-varying group formation protocol with switching directed topologies is proposed using local relative state information of each agent and its neighbors. Then an algorithm to design the protocol is presented. Based on the piecewise Lyapunov function theory, sufficient conditions for second-order multi-agent systems to achieve time-varying group formation with switching directed topologies are derived together with the time-varying group formation feasibility constraints and the threshold for the dwell time. Finally, a numerical simulation with two subgroups is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.