Distributed Control for Time-Varying Formation Acquisition and Tracking With Orientation Alignment in Multivehicle Systems

In multiagent coordination tasks, motion trajectories are required to satisfy a range of constraints that present significant implementation challenges due to the limited onboard sensing and communication capacities. This article introduces distributed control laws that integrate nonholonomic motion constraints into bearing-based designs to enable time-varying formation tracking with minimal onboard resources. Unlike state-of-the-art formation control solutions, this approach maintains formation shape through relative bearing feedback and orientation alignment rather than tracking global target locations or regulating interagent relative positions and velocities. This distributed controller design has been validated in two deployment scenarios: 1) leaderless nonhierarchical formations and 2) leader-follower hierarchical formations. In hierarchical formations, follower agents employ a speed estimator within the orientation alignment framework to reach velocity consensus with the leader agent. The proposed controllers guarantee accurate tracking of time-varying reference trajectories, preserve the desired formation structures, and achieve velocity consensus for both nonhierarchical and hierarchical formations, as established by analysis and validated through simulations and experiments.