Time-optimal coordinated control of the relative formation of multiple vehicles

This paper presents a solution to the time-optimal control of the relative formation of multiple vehicles. This is a problem in cooperative time-optimal control with a free terminal state constraint. In this paper, a canonical formulation of the problem is first derived. Then, a numerical technique to solve this class of problem is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed formulation and solution to the problem of expeditiously building and controlling formations of cooperative autonomous vehicles.