Distributed control for minimal rigid formation of multiple mobile autonomous agents

In this paper, we consider an acyclic rigid formation control problem with a group of mobile autonomous agents. The formation is generated via a Henneberg sequence operation, where there is one global leader which does not follow any other agents, one first-follower which only follows the global leader, and besides each agent has at most two leaders. Under the acceleration constraint of the global leader, distributed formation control laws are proposed for the followers which only utilize the relative distance measurement. The control law of the first-follower is also proposed which needs to know the velocity of the global leader and the relative distance between the global leader and itself. The asymptotical stability of the formation is also proved via Lyapunov function method. Simulation experiments are conducted and the results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed formation control approach.