Fencing Control of a Maneuvering Target by Heterogeneous Euler-Lagrange Swarms

This paper addresses a distinct type of formation tracking problem, referred to self-organizing fencing control. The objective is to coordinate heterogeneous Euler-Lagrange swarms in a self-organizing manner to fence a maneuvering target. Unlike traditional formation tracking control, the proposed fencing controller does not need to know the desired formation and relies merely on several parameters that can be uniform across all agents. The fencing controller consists of three components: a target tracking term, a collision avoidance term, and an adaptive mechanism to account for the heterogeneous parameters of the agents. The resulting formation emerges from the coordination among the agents, and the target is asymptotically fenced at the center of the formation. Furthermore, when the number of the agents in the swarm changes, the swarm can autonomously reorganize a new formation to fence the target. The results are substantiated through rigorous analysis and numerical simulations.