Surrounding control of nonlinear multi-agent systems with non-identical agents

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Theory
• Multi-Agent Systems

Background:

• Controlling groups of non-identical agents presents challenges in achieving coordinated formations.
• Existing methods often struggle with nonlinear dynamics and unknown agent parameters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an adaptive control strategy for a team of follower agents to surround a team of moving leaders.
• To achieve an equidistant distributed formation for the followers around the leaders.
• To address nonlinear dynamics and unknown parameters in multi-agent systems.

Main Methods:

• Introduction of an estimator for the center of the moving leaders.
• Proposal of two distributed adaptive controllers for each follower agent, utilizing the estimated leader center.
• Application of algebraic graph theory and Lyapunov theory to prove stability and parameter convergence.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of a stable control protocol for follower agents.
• Validation of parameter convergence for the adaptive controllers.
• Successful simulation results confirming the theoretical framework.

Conclusions:

• The proposed adaptive design method effectively enables follower agents to achieve surrounding control and equidistant formations.
• The theoretical results are validated through a numerical example, showcasing the robustness of the control strategy for nonlinear multi-agent systems.