Distributed control design for leader escort of multi-agent systems

Abstract

In this paper, we consider two-group leader escort control for multi-agent systems, where the agents are separated into two groups to escort an active leader with the same distance. To escort the moving leader, we propose different distributed controls for different cases: the bounded-leader case and the schedule-based general leader case (under either known or unknown time-varying parameter rotation-schedule). Because some agents may not get access to the leader directly, we construct the distributed controllers to escort the leader by moving symmetrically around the leader under either fixed or switching topologies, based on a distributed observer for each agent to estimate the leader's state. With the help of graph theory and Lyapunov function technique, we prove that the leader escort can be achieved asymptotically by theoretical analysis. Finally, simulation results demonstrate good performance of the proposed protocols.

Keywords:

• multi-agent systems
• leader escort
• distributed control
• fixed or switching topology

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers and the editor-in-chief for their very helpful comments and suggestions, which have improved our paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 61174071], [grant number 61333001], and by 973 Programme [grant number 2014CB845301/2/3].