Formation control of rigid bodies based on orientation alignment and position estimation

Abstract

We study cooperative formation control based on orientation alignment and position estimation for kinematic rigid bodies moving in two- or three-dimensional space. We assume agents sense relative positions of their neighbors with respect to their own local reference coordinates, orientations of which are not aligned to each other initially. The proposed formation control strategy consists of orientation alignment, position estimation, and position control laws. If the interaction graph is strongly connected and orientations of the agents are initially close enough, the orientations of the agents are exponentially aligned and the estimated and actual positions asymptotically converge to actual and desired positions, respectively, up to translation in a common reference coordinate.