Abbreviated zero order hold for formation control in the presence of communication and sensing delays

The work in this paper focuses on stabilization in the presence of delayed and intermittent communication in the coordinated control of multiple vehicles. Without prediction of the system evolution during the communication and sensing delays, an alternative to the design of stabilizing controllers based on state gain selection is constructed. The technique consists of an abbreviated zero order hold, which works in an analogous way to manipulating the system phase and gain margins in linear systems. Simulations demonstrate the results for multiple vehicle scenarios