RRT*-Based Leader-Follower Trajectory Planning and Tracking in Multi-Agent Systems

Coordination of multi-agent systems has received significant attention during the past few years owing to its wide real-world applications, such as cooperative exploration, aircraft formation, and autonomous vehicle platooning. To address this issue, this research presents a novel method for multi-agent systems to navigate through environments with obstacles. The system consists of a group of agents with a leader-follower structure, where the leader aids in guiding the agents toward the target location and the followers are steered to maintain a flexible formation. To achieve cooperation, the agents communicate within a connected and undirected network, exchanging information within a specific radius. The leader's path is generated using the RRT* algorithm, which serves as a reference for the followers. A control law utilizes consensus and APF is then implemented, ensuring coordinated motion while maintaining safe distances among agents and between agents and obstacles. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed two-layer coordination strategy is verified by simulations.