Translational and Scaling Formation Maneuver Control via a Bearing-Based Approach

This paper studies distributed maneuver control of multi-agent formations in arbitrary dimensions. The objective is to control the translation and scale of the formation while maintaining the desired formation pattern. Unlike conventional approaches where the target formation is defined by relative positions or distances, we propose a novel bearing-based approach where the target formation is defined by inter-neighbor bearings. Since the bearings are invariant to the translation and scale of the formation, the bearing-based approach provides a simple solution to the problem of translational and scaling formation maneuver control. Linear formation control laws for double-integrator dynamics are proposed and the global formation stability is analyzed. This paper also studies bearing-based formation control in the presence of practical problems including input disturbances, acceleration saturation, and collision avoidance. The theoretical results are illustrated with numerical simulations.