Distributed Formation Control of Multiple Euler–Lagrange Systems: A Multilayer Framework

In this technical correspondence, a multilayer formation (MLF) control problem is considered and solved by a unified framework. The agents in each layer present a sort of hierarchical distinction: receive information from former layers, communicate inside the current layer, and send information to subsequent layers. With an arbitrary number of layers, we extend the previous result from undirected graphs to directed ones. The proposed controller achieves MLF without using the distributed estimators and the acceleration information. This removes the induced discontinuities and alleviates the system complexity. It is then proved that the closed-loop errors are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulations are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.