Bearing-Based Target Entrapping Control of Multiple Uncertain Agents With Arbitrary Maneuvers

This paper is concerned with bearing-based cooperative target entrapping control of multiple uncertain agents with arbitrary maneuvers including shape deformation, rotations, scalings, etc. A leader-follower structure is used, where the leaders move with the predesigned trajectories, and the followers are steered by an estimation-based control method, integrating a distance estimator using bearing measurements and a stress matrix-based formation controller. The signum functions are used to compensate for the uncertainties so that the agents' accelerations can be piecewise continuous and bounded to track the desired dynamics. With proper design of the leaders' trajectories and a geometric configuration, an affine matrix is determined so that the inter-agent relative bearings can be persistently exciting since the bearing rates are related to different weighted combinations of the affine matrix vectors. The asymptotic convergence of the estimation and control error is proved using Filipov properties and cascaded system theories. A sufficient condition for inter-agent collision avoidance is also proposed. Finally, simulation results are given to validate the effectiveness of the method. Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors.