Formation and obstacles avoidance of leader-follower networks with time-varying coupling delays

This paper investigates coordination and control of multi-agent systems, or swarms, within the framework of a leader-follower network with varying time-delay interconnections. A coordination strategy for formation control based on a potential function is proposed and the stability of this formation control is proved. An extended controller is then derived by weighting the relative importance of different behaviors, i.e. moving forward, keeping formation and obstacles avoidance. Illustrative examples are finally given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.