(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-12)
Sattigeri, Ramachandra J.; Calise, Anthony J.; Evers, Johnny H.
In considering the problem of formation control in the deployment of intelligent
munitions, it would be highly desirable, both from a mission and a cost perspective, to limit
the information that is transmitted between vehicles in formation. We have proposed an
adaptive output feedback approach to address this problem. Adaptive formation controllers
are designed that allow each vehicle in formation to maintain separation and relative
orientation with respect to neighboring vehicles, while avoiding obstacles. We have
implemented two approaches for formation control, namely, leader-follower formations and
leaderless formations. In leader-follower formations, there is a unique leader and all the
other vehicles are followers. In leaderless formations, there is no unique leader. Each vehicle
tracks line-of-sight range to up to two nearest vehicles while simultaneously navigating
towards a common set of waypoints. As our results show, such leaderless formations can
perform maneuvers like splitting to go around obstacles, rejoining after negotiating the
obstacles, and changing into line-shaped formation in order to move through narrow
corridors.