Distance-based control of formations with orientation control

In this paper, we deal with formation stabilization of a group of mobile agents with orientation control. The proposed method is to combine usual distance-based control with displacement-based control so that the shape of the formation is dominantly controlled by distance-based control, and the orientation of the whole formation is forced to converge to the desired orientation by the additional displacement control input. We assume that the network topology is represented by an undirected graph and that the motion of each agent is simplified to a single-integrator model. We provide stability analysis for the desired formation shape, and four-agent systems are explored to understand asymptotic convergence of the agents. Simulation results are also included to verify our results.