Circular Formation Tracking Control for Time-delayed Second-order Multi-agent Systems with Multiple Leaders

In this paper, circular formation tracking control problems for time-delayed second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with multiple leaders are studied, where the state of followers are designed to form a circular formation while tracking the average state of the multiple leaders. A circular formation tracking control protocol with time-varying delays is proposed. Sufficient conditions for time-delayed second-order MASs with multiple leaders to realize circular formation tracking are given. The presented results can be applied to target enclosing problem for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with a group of targets and time-varying delays. Numerical examples on target enclosing are provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the theoretical results.