Bearing-Only Formation Tracking Control With Time-Varying Leaders’ Velocity without Inter-Agent Communication

This paper studies the bearing-only formation tracking problem of leader-follower multi-agent systems, where the leaders move at a time-varying velocity. Different from the existing formation tracking methods, the proposed control protocol can be implemented without inter-agent communication. We construct the control protocol via a variable structure approach to track the time-varying velocity and almost achieve the target formation. We also show that the velocity tracking error will converge to zero and the position tracking error can be restricted in an upper bounded set while the upper bound can be arbitrarily minimized by increasing the control gain. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control protocol.