Cooperative Moving-Target Enclosing Control for Multiple Nonholonomic Vehicles Using Feedback Linearization Approach

This article investigates the moving-target circular formation control problem for multiple nonholonomic vehicles under a directed graph. First, a novel moving-target enclosing control scheme is proposed by using the feedback linearization approach, in which the design procedure of the cooperative controller is more straightforward. Compared with the existing literature, the designed controller relaxes some existing constraints and the corresponding stability analysis is more concise. Second, based on the distance measurements, the observers, including sliding-mode observer and relative position observer, are designed to estimate the relative position so that the global position measurements are not required. Therefore, the observer-based controller becomes more suitable for practical application. Numerical simulations are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.