Coordination control of multiple Euler-Lagrange systems for escorting mission

Summary In this paper, a motion control problem of multi-agent systems for escorting a target is investigated by employing nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control and adaptive control associated with kinematic control. The proposed control law is robust to model uncertainty and disturbances, and it guarantees all the agents to scatter around the target evenly and escort it with a fixed distance while avoiding obstacles (or collisions) in p-dimensional case (p≥2 is a positive integer). Finite-time convergence of the position errors and velocity errors is proved rigorously by a Lyapunov-based approach and finite-time control techniques. Simulation results in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional space are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and high-precision performance of the control algorithm compared with the traditional adaptive sliding mode control, showing that all the agents can move into suitable positions on the surface of the sphere in the escort mission, and the formation can be reconfigured automatically when the obstacle (or collision) avoidance task is active.