Sliding Mode Coordination Control Design for Multiagent Systems

In this paper, we develop a coordination control technique for a group of agents described by a general class of underactuated dynamics. The objective is for the agents to reach and maintain a desired formation characterized by steady-state distances between the neighboring agents. We use graph theoretic notions to characterize communication topology in the network determined by the information flow directions and captured by the graph Laplacian matrix. Furthermore, using sliding mode control approach, we design decentralized controllers for individual agents that use only data from the neighboring agents which directly communicate their state information to the current agent in order to drive the current agent to the desired steady state. Finally, we show the efficacy of our theoretical results on the example of a system of wheeled mobile robots that reach and maintain the desired formation.