Unit dual quaternion directed graphs, formation control and general weighted directed graphs

Abstract

We study the multi-agent formation control problem in a directed graph. The relative configurations are expressed by unit dual quaternions (UDQs). We call such a weighted directed graph a unit dual quaternion directed graph (UDQDG). We show that a desired relative configuration scheme is reasonable or balanced in a UDQDG if and only if there is a diagonal matrix with UDQ diagonal elements such that the dual quaternion Laplacian is similar to the unweighted Laplacian of the underlying directed graph. A direct method and a unit gain graph method are proposed to solve the balance problem of general unit weighted directed graphs. We then study the balance problem of general non-unit weighted directed graphs. Numerical experiments for UDQDG are reported.