Circular Formation of General Linear Agents Using Output Feedback

This work is concern with achieving circular formation in a Multi-agent system (MAS) where each agent has the same linear dynamics. The approach taken here have several desirable features: (i) it requires at the minimum only one agent to know its own position while the rest need only relative position information from their neighbors; (ii) the approach is based on the output regulation methodology but uses the output feedback controller instead of the popular error feedback controller. The output feedback scheme has the advantage of a simpler design as the parameters are decoupled. With minimal modifications, the approach provided can be used to achieve MAS with user-defined center of the circle with different radii and elliptical formation. These features are illustrated using several examples.