Continuum Deformation Coordination of Multi-Agent Systems Using Cooperative Localization

This paper studies the problem of decentralized continuum deformation coordination of multi-agent systems aided by cooperative localization. We treat agents as particles inside a triangular continuum (deformable body) in a 2-D motion space and let the continuum deformation coordination be defined by three leaders located at vertices of a triangle, called the leading triangle. The leaders’ desired trajectories are assigned as the solution of a constrained optimal control problem such that safety requirements are satisfied in the presence of disturbance and measurement noise. Followers distributed inside the leading triangle acquire continuum deformation in a decentralized fashion by integrating cooperative localization and local communication. Specifically, cooperative localization estimates the global positions of all agents using relative position measurements based primarily on proximity of agents. Simulation results are presented for a network of ten agents.