Guaranteed Estimation and Distributed Control of Vehicle Formations

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed set-membership estimation and formation control algorithm for a fleet of vehicles. Each vehicle is equipped with an agent with sensing, acting, computational and communication capacities. The agent's objective is to compute estimation set for the state of all the fleet of vehicles and, additionally, generate control actions to keep its local vehicle in formation. In order to improve the estimation, the agents exchange information with other neighbouring agents. The estimation sets are mathematically characterised by zonotopes. The novelty of the proposed solution lies in the fact that the estimation is guaranteed in spite of the lack of knowledge of the control signal applied by the rest of vehicles. Then, in the presence of bounded disturbances and noises, the position reference for the vehicles can be tracked with a bounded estimation. The proposed solution is tested by simulations.