A Novel Fixed Time Formation for Unmanned Ground Vehicles Under Communication Denial Conditions: Relative Information Control Method

Communication limitations and energy consumption are the two core challenges in the field of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) formation control. To address these issues, this paper proposes a new fixed-time formation control strategy (FTFCS), particularly suitable for communication denial environments. The proposed strategy first utilizes onboard sensors to collect relative position information enabling the reconstruction of the position of the leader. Subsequently, based on this information, a high gain observer is constructed to achieve real-time estimation of the leader’s velocity. Furthermore, considering the perceptual constraint range and collision avoidance requirements of UGVs, a novel FTFCS is designed by integrating the tanh-function and prescribed performance control (PPC). This approach effectively mitigates the inherent oscillations and high energy consumption issues associated with traditional FTFCS, resulting in a 30% reduction in energy consumption. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.