Distributed formation control of the special Euclidean group SE(2) via global orientation control

Abstract

The authors propose fully distributed strategies for multi-agent formation control of the two-dimensional special Euclidean group. To control the rotated local reference frames, they firstly estimate the orientation angle of each agent with regard to a global reference frame. By using only local measurements, the orientation angle is estimated in a distributed way. The estimated orientation is, then, exploited to control each agent's orientation. Each agent's orientation converges to the prescribed desired orientation. Finally, a distributed formation control strategy based on displacement measurement is proposed to achieve the desired formation shape of the two-dimensional special Euclidean group. Under the proposed strategy, the authors ensure that the formation shape including position and orientation exponentially converges to the desired formation shape. Moreover, the formation shape is invariant to a translation and a rotation compared with the desired formation shape. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2020