Distributed Formation Control and Dynamic Formation Transformation for Multi-vehicle Systems based on Virtual Leader-Follower Structure and Triggered Strategy

This paper studies the problem of virtual leader-follower formation control of multi-vehicle systems. Firstly, a virtual leader is modeled according to the common task and a distributed model is constructed for each vehicle using its neighbors’ relative position and heading angle. Then, a virtual leader-follower formation control and an optimal formation matching algorithm are developed for each vehicle to achieve dynamic formation transformation in a distributed way. Based on Hungarian and Bipartite algorithms, different vehicles are matched with the minimum relative distance to the formation reference, and formation deviation and color detection are used as triggers to implement the formation transformation. Finally, hardware experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the provided methods.