Collision-free second-order vehicle formation control under time-varying network topology

This paper is concerned with collision-free second-order vehicle formation control when the inter-vehicle network topology is time-varying. The proposed control law has two parts: one for converging to a desired formation (no collision avoidance considered); the other for achieving collision avoidance. Unlike existing works, the proposed control law uses a fixed (so easy-to-implement) set of time-invariant control gains for achieving the desired formation and the gradient of a distance-based edge-tension function for collision avoidance. This simple combination of the two parts provably allows for collision-free formation control under time-varying network topologies. Theoretical and numerical evidences are provided to justify the effectiveness of the developed control law.