Formation stabilization and tracking control of mobile agents using local potential functions

We present a constructive method to design cooperative controllers that force a group of N mobile agents to stabilize at a fixed desired location in terms of both shape and orientation while guaranteeing no collisions between the agents can occur. The proposed formation stabilization solution is extended to formation tracking in 2-dimensional (2D) space. The control development is based on new local potential functions, which attain the minimum value when the desired formation is achieved, and are equal to infinity when a collision occurs.