A Hierarchical Nested Constraint Scheme for Finite-Time Formation Tracking Control of Disturbed Second-Order Multiagent Systems

This article proposes a hierarchical nested constraint finite-time formation control scheme to solve the formation control problem of disturbed second-order multiagent systems with collision avoidance and connectivity preservation. The main idea of the proposed approach is to achieve agent collision avoidance and connectivity preservation goals in a nested manner by allocating the spatial distance constraints to the reference signals and the tracking control errors in the hierarchical formation control strategy, respectively. In general, the proposed method inherits the advantages of the hierarchical control scheme and integrates both collision avoidance and connectivity preservation functions, while realizing finite-time formation convergence and multichannel disturbance handling under agent spatial distance constraints. This combination of capabilities is not achieved in the existing reports. The proposed method is applied to an actual multi-mobile robot system to demonstrate its effectiveness.