Weighted centroid tracking control for multi-agent systems

This paper investigates the weighted centroid formation tracking control for multi-agent systems. First, a class of novel distributed observers is developed for each agent to infer the formation's weighted centroid in finite time. Then, the distance-based control law is proposed based on the estimations, such that the weighted centroid of the formation is driven to track the assigned time-varying reference, meanwhile maintaining the prescribed formation shape. Moreover, the formation stabilization error is shown to converge to zero using the proposed observer-controller scheme utilizing the finite-time Lyapunov stability of the observers. Finally, all the theoretical results are further validated through numerical simulations.