Application of Sliding Mode Control for the Formation of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems

This paper proposes a fundamental sliding mode control (SMC) method for the formation of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with fixed topology and a virtual leader consisting of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and two wheeled mobile robot (2WMR) unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). SMC is used to direct the agents for the purposes of achieving consensus and formation in a two-dimensional environment. The stability analysis with the resultant system shows that the errors can be driven to zero. Finally, simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for a team of three UAVs and three UGVs. Both static and dynamic formation cases are validated with simulated studies, as well as a case with a disturbance.