Time-varying group formation tracking for second-order multi-agent systems with switching directed topologies

Abstract

Time-varying group formation tracking problems for second-order multi-agent systems with switching directed topologies are studied, where the followers are divided into subgroups to form pre-defined time-varying sub-formations while tracking the leader of the subgroups that they belong to. Firstly, a time-varying group formation tracking protocol is constructed using local relative state information of each agent and its neighbors. Then an algorithm to design the protocol is proposed. Based on the piecewise Lyapunov function theory, the stability of the proposed algorithm is proven and feasibility constraints as well as the threshold for the dwell time are also presented. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.