Bearing-only control of directed cycle formations: Almost global convergence and hardware implementation

Abstract

In this article, we study bearing-only control of directed cyclic formations. First, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the bearing constraints so that the directed cycle formation ofn-agents in (n-1)-dimensional space is infinitesimally bearing rigid. Second, a bearing-only control law which only allows motions perpendicular to the desired bearing vector is proposed. Under this control law, the agents globally asymptotically converge to a desired formation which is fully determined from their initial positions and desired bearing vectors. Finally, the proposed formation control law is implemented on mobile robots to support the analysis.