Distributed model predictive control for multi-vehicle formation with collision avoidance constraints

This paper presents a distributed model predictive control (WC) method for unicycles in formation with collision avoidance constraints. The proposed method first stabilizes the system by using a feedback linearization, and then a collision avoidance method based on MPC is applied to the linearized system. One of the features of the proposed method is that each vehicle sequentially solves its optimal control problem at different time step. Unlike other MPC collision avoidance methods in which all vehicles solve optimal control problems at every time step, only one vehicle can solve its optimization problem at one time step. We derive a condition for the proposed method to ensure the feasibility of the optimization method and stability of the closed-loop system. The effectiveness of the method is also investigated by experiments.