Distance- and Velocity-Based Collision Avoidance for Time-Varying Formation Control of Second-Order Multi-Agent Systems

This brief addresses the time-varying formation control problem with collision avoidance for second-order multi-agent systems. By taking both distances and velocities between agents into account, a novel collision avoidance scheme is proposed on the basis of conventional distance-based artificial potential field methods. Compared with the latter, the proposed scheme can more accurately determine possible collision situations and thus significantly reduce possible collision areas, which consequently not only can reduce energy consumption, but also has as few adverse effects on formation maintenance as possible. Then a time-varying formation control protocol is designed so as to achieve zero steady-state position and velocity formation tracking errors without collision. Finally, theoretical analysis, numerical demonstration, as well as comparative simulation are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.