Bearing-based formation manoeuvre control of nonholonomic multi-agent systems

This paper concerns on the bearing-based leader-follower formation manoeuvre control problem for two- (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) multi-agent systems with nonholonomic constraint. The target formation is defined by relative-bearing measurements, which, for example, can be obtained from onboard cameras. The contributions of this paper are twofold. Firstly, a distributed formation manoeuvre control law is proposed for 2D nonholonomic agents according to the inter-bearing measurement. The multi-agent systems can achieve the desired formation which is defined by the bearings information. The formation manoeuvre can be achieved by steering at least two leaders. Secondly, the control law is nontrivially extended to 3D nonholonomic multi-agents systems. The leader-follower formation tracking problem can also be solved by the proposed proportional-integral control scheme. Simulation results for 2D and 3D nonholonomic multi-agents systems are presented. Experiments that used ground mobile robots verify the effectiveness of the proposed control laws.