Theory and Experiments on Enclosing Control of Multi-Agent Systems

This paper proposes a control strategy called enclosing control. This strategy can be described as follows: the followers design their control inputs based on the state information of neighbor agents and move to specified positions.The convex hull formed by these followers contains the leaders.We use the single-integrator model to describe the dynamics of the agents and proposes a continuous-time control protocol and a sampled-data based protocol for multi-agent systems with stationary leaders with fixed network topology. Then the state differential equations are analyzed to obtain the parameter requirements for the system to achieve convergence. Moreover,the conditions achieving enclosing control are established for both protocols. A special enclosing control with no leader located on the convex hull boundary under the protocols is studied, which can effectively prevent enclosing control failures caused by errors in the system. Moreover, several simulations are proposed to validate theoretical results and compare the differences between the three control protocols. Finally, experimental results on the multi-robot platform are provided to verify the feasibility of the protocol in the physical system.