A Hierarchical Formation-Containment Control Scheme for Second-Order Multi-agent Systems

In this paper, a hierarchical formation-containment control scheme is proposed for second-order multi-agent systems. The proposed hierarchical scheme decouples the control task into two layers, i.e., reference signal generator and agents’ tracking controllers. First, a reference signal generator is designed in Layer 1 for leader agents and follower agents, respectively, to produce the formation reference signals and containment reference signals, whose outputs “achieve” formation-containment asymptotically. Second, tracking controllers are designed in Layer 2 for each agent to track the reference signal. The proposed hierarchical formation-containment scheme realizes formation-containment asymptotically. The simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness and practicality of the scheme.