Distributed Robust Time-Varying Formation Control of Multi-Agent Systems Under Disturbances

This work considers the problem of time-varying formation tracking control of second-order multi-agent systems under disturbances. A distributed robust time-varying formation control law is proposed including distributed finite-time estimators of the leader's states and sliding mode time-varying formation controllers. Firstly, each agent can quickly estimate the leader's states through the communication network in the distributed finite-time estimators based on the sliding mode estimation. Secondly, utilizing the estimates of the leader's states, a sliding mode time-varying formation controller is designed using the prescribed time modification function. Unlike traditional distributed control law relying on the exchanges of the agents' states, the proposed control design achieves great robustness and stability of the overall system by exchanging the estimates of the leader's states. According to Lyapunov stability analysis, we prove that the proposed approach enables the sliding variables to achieve fast finite-time convergence. Furthermore, simulation examples are provided to illustrate the performance.