Time-varying Group Formation with Leader-following Control for Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems

This paper studies time-varying group formation control for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MAS). Two subgroups of heterogeneous MAS consisting of second-order dynamic and Euler-Lagrange (E-L) dynamic agents, three subgroups of heterogeneous MAS consisting of first-order, second-order dynamic and E-L dynamic agents are considered respectively. Firstly, through the assumption of the formation-tracking feasibility condition and the design of the formation compensation vectors in the controller, the time-varying formation control can be transformed into a consensus problem. Then, a distributed controller based on neighbor information is designed and sufficient conditions for time-varying formation control are obtained. The time-varying group formation problem of heterogeneous MAS is analyzed by Lyapunov stability theory and eigenvalue theory. Finally, two simulation results show that the proposed controller can realize the time-varying formation control of heterogeneous group MAS.