Distributed Adaptive Formation Control of Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems with Unknown System Parameters

In this paper, we consider the leaderless formation control problem for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) consisting of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) with unknown system parameters. In order to solve the problem caused by nonidentical subsystem orders, a new distributed reference system is introduced in each agent, in which only the relative positions of the agents are involved. Then, a backstepping-based distributed adaptive control is proposed under directed graph condition. With the proposed control scheme, the boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop system can be ensured and the positions of heterogeneous MASs can converge to a desired formation. Finally, experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.