Distributed Variation Parameter Design for Dynamic Formation Maneuvers With Bearing Constraints

The aim of this study is to investigate the problem of cooperative multi-robot variation parameter design for dynamic formation maneuvers with bearing constraints. Notably, scaling and translation are relatively economical bearing-preserving motions in terms of formation changes. Typically, the variation parameters, i.e., the desired scaling size and translation vector, are designed offline a priori, and it is often challenging to dynamically generate the desired formation in response to a changing ambient environment. This paper proposes an online distributed design method to determine the variation parameters of an entire formation. First, local variation policies are generated by the proposed high-order control barrier functions based on received local excitations from the environment. Subsequently, using the distributed average tracking technique, consensus filters are employed to integrate various local variation policies in a weighted-average manner, which ensures that the bearing is maintained in dynamic formation maneuvers. Finally, numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.