Bearing-Only Formation Control of Nonholonomic Mobile Agents With Local Reference Frames

In this paper, the bearing-only leader-follower formation control problem for nonholonomic mobile agents in local reference frames is studied. The sensing/communication topology of multi-agent systems is modeled by an undirected graph. The target formation is specified by bearing constraints. The autonomous leaders are moving with a constant velocity which is known to only some followers. Each follower merely measures the bearings and relative orientations of its neighboring agents which are acquired in its local reference frame. To estimate the leaders' information, a distributed observer for each follower is designed. Then, we combine the observer and a developed bearing-only control law with the estimate into a dynamic control law, such that the target formation can be achieved. Finally, we present a simulation example to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.