Distributed Leader–Follower Affine Formation Maneuver Control for High-Order Multiagent Systems

To steer a group of agents to maneuver with the desired collective forms, this article studies the affine formation maneuver control of high-order multiagent systems using a two-layered leader-follower strategy, in which agents are divided into three types: first leader, second leader group, and followers. The first leader will decide the whole formation's maneuver parameters, and the second leader group will keep the desired relative positions with respect to the first leader. The followers aim at moving to the desired positions affinely localized by the leaders. The main feature of this two-layered leader-follower strategy is that the information interaction from the first leader to the second leader group can be realized via wireless communication, and only the measurements of local relative position and its finite-order time-derivatives are needed for the followers. To achieve the control objective under the given constraints, the distributed control algorithms are designed for the second leader group and followers, in which the backstepping, distributed estimation, $PD^m$, and adaptive gain design techniques are employed. Finally, a simulation example with obstacle avoidance is provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.