Bearing-Constrained Leader-Follower Formation of Single-Integrators with Disturbance Rejection: Adaptive Variable-Structure Approaches

Abstract: This paper studies the problem of stabilizing a leader-follower formation specified by a set of bearing constraints and being disturbed by some unknown uniformly bounded disturbance{s}. A set of leaders are positioned at their desired positions, while each follower is modeled by a single integrator with an additive time-varying disturbance. Adaptive variable-structure control laws using displacements or only bearing vectors are provided to stabilize the desired formation. Thanks to the adaptive mechanisms, the proposed control laws require neither information of the bearing Laplacian nor the disturbances' directions and upper bounds. It is further proved that when the leaders are moving with a same bounded uniformly continuous velocity, the moving target formation can still be achieved under the proposed control laws. Simulation results are also given to support the stability analysis.