Formation-containment tracking control for heterogeneous unmanned swarm systems with switching topologies

For the high-order heterogeneous swarm systems with different intra-layer cooperative control objectives and inter-layer coordination couplings，a definition and the framework for formation-containment tracking control of the swarm systems are proposed. A tracking-leader with time-varying input is applied to generate the macroscopic reference trajectory for the whole swarm systems，overcoming the shortcoming of existing formation-containment control approaches，i. e. ，they cannot be used to get an effective control of the macroscopic movement of the whole system. Considering the influences of switching topologies，a distributed formation-containment tracking protocol and a multi-step design algorithm are proposed based on the robust adaptive estimation approach and the predefined containment control strategy. With inter-layer coordination couplings，sufficient conditions for achieving formation-containment tracking by the heterogeneous swarm systems with switching typologies are given using the common Lyapunov stability theory. A simulation example for a group of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles is given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. © 2023 AAAS Press of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. All rights reserved.