Design of formation control architecture based on leader-following approach

This paper considers the formation control problem of Multi-Agent systems in two-dimension plane. A three-layer formation control architecture is proposed for each Agent in the formation team. The author defines a vector and a matrix to represent the formation trajectory and formation shape of the whole team, respectively. The leader Agent tracking the formation trajectory, whereas all the follower Agents tracking their desired trajectory derived based on moving trajectory of leader Agent and formation shape matrix. Simulations are made in three case, standard formation control, formation control under formation trajectory switching and formation control under switching of both formation trajectory and formation shape. Results are included to verify the realizability and flexibility of the proposed three-layer formation control architecture.