Sequential formation control in multiagent systems

The problem of sequential formation control in multiagent systems is studied in this paper, where a team of agents is required to establish needed formations in order at user-defined times. To address this problem, our contribution is a finite-time distributed control architecture predicated on multiplex networks over directed graph topologies. The key feature of the multiplex networks is that it allows leader agent(s) to spatially alter the size and orientation of the resulting formation without requiring global information exchange ability. In addition, the key feature of the finite-time approach is to ensure that the overall multiagent system establishes a particular formation determined by the leader agent(s) at user-defined times. System-theoretical analysis of the proposed architecture is given using the time transformation approach along with Lyapunov stability theory, and an illustrative numerical example is also included to demonstrate the ability of the proposed architecture in addressing the sequential formation control problem.

Automated summary

This paper studies the problem of sequential formation control in multiagent systems, where a team of agents needs to establish needed formations at user-defined times. To address this problem, the authors propose a finite-time distributed control architecture based on multiplex networks over directed graph topologies. The key features of the proposed architecture are the ability to spatially alter the formation without global information exchange and the ability to establish a specific formation determined by leader agent(s) at user-defined times. The authors provide system-theoretical analysis using time transformation approach and Lyapunov stability theory, and demonstrate the ability of the proposed architecture through a numerical example.