Output-Feedback Bipartite Formation Control for Autonomous Multivehicle Systems

This article addresses an autonomous bipartite time-varying formation control problem for heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs). Unlike traditional formation control methods, the proposed approach enables two antagonistic time-varying formations to emerge without requiring a common reference model or shared trajectory information. To tackle this problem, a novel dynamic update law and an adaptive formation control strategy, based solely on local output information, are proposed. The proposed controller allows agents to autonomously cooperate via a communication network to align with an implicit common reference trajectory and achieve the desired bipartite formation, independent of network topology. A rigorous Lyapunov-based analysis establishes the stability and convergence of the proposed fully distributed controller. The effectiveness of the approach is validated through both numerical simulations and real-world experiments on a platform consisting of six uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs).