Directed Formation Control of n Planar Agents with Distance and Area Constraints

In this paper, we take a first step towards generalizing a recently proposed method for dealing with the problem of convergence to incorrect equilibrium points of distance-based formation controllers. Specifically, we introduce a distance and area-based scheme for the formation control of n-agent systems in two dimensions using directed graphs and the single-integrator model. We show that under certain conditions on the edge lengths of the triangulated desired formation, the control ensures almost-global convergence to the correct formation.