Distributed Circular Formation Control of Nonholonomic Vehicles Without Direct Distance Measurements

This note presents a static distributed formation control law for nonholonomic vehicles subject to velocity constraints, such that the controlled vehicles travel along a common circle with the given center and radius, while maintaining a desired spaced formation. The center is assumed to be known to only some vehicles. The proposed controller does not require any communication, and only uses local measurements based on a sensor graph of which the topology is modeled by a directed graph satisfying a certain acyclic condition. Moreover, direct distance measurements are not needed. Finally, the simulation results of an example verify effectiveness of the proposed controller.