Robust Formation Maintenance Methods under General Topology Pursuit of Multi-Agents Systems

Abstract

In this article, methods of formation maintenance for a group of autonomous agents under ageneral topology scheme are discussed. Unlike rendezvous or geometric formation, general topology pursuit allows the group of agents to autonomously form trochoid patterns, which are useful in civilian and military applications. However, this type of topology is established by designing a marginally stable system that may be sensitive to parameter variations. To account for this drawback of stability, linear fixed-gains are turned into a dynamical version in this paper. By implementing a disturbance observer controller, systems are shown to maintain their formation despite the disturbances or uncertainties. Comparison in the effectiveness of the presented method with model reference adaptive control and integral sliding mode control under the uncertainties of the gains is also conducted. The capabilities of controllers are demonstrated and supported through simulations.