Decentralized trajectory tracking with collision avoidance control for teams of unmanned vehicles with constant speed

In this paper, we present a decentralized trajectory tracking control with collision avoidance for an arbitrarily large group of heterogeneous, nonholonomic vehicles. We consider vehicles with different constant speeds and bounded turning rates (e.g., airplanes), for which their avoidance maneuverability is limited. The proposed controller is divided in two parts: an auxiliary system and a local heading control. The auxiliary system is in charge of guiding the vehicle toward the desired trajectory while guaranteeing collision avoidance with other agents at all times. The local heading control is designed such that the vehicle remains continuously within a bounded, short distance of the auxiliary system. To enforce the convergence of the vehicles to a proximity of their desired trajectories and avoid deadlocks (a common issue within most decentralized navigation methods), an alternative discontinuous control strategy is presented. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed control strategy.