A Barycentric Coordinate-Based Approach to Formation Control Under Directed and Switching Sensing Graphs

This paper investigates two formation control problems for a leader-follower network in 3-D. One is called the formation marching control problem, the objective of which is to steer the agents to maintain a target formation shape while moving with the synchronized velocity. The other one is called the formation rotating control problem, whose goal is to drive the agents to rotate around a common axis with a target formation. For the above two problems, we consider directed and switching sensing topologies while the communication is assumed to be bidirectional and switching. We develop approaches utilizing barycentric coordinates toward these two problems. Local control laws and graphical conditions are acquired to ensure global convergence in both scenarios.