Safe and Stable Formation Control with Autonomous Multi-Agents Using Adaptive Control (Extended Version)

Abstract

This manuscript considers the problem of ensuring stability and safety during formation control with distributed multi-agent systems in the presence of parametric uncertainty in the dynamics and limited communication. We propose an integrative approach that combines Adaptive Control, Control Barrier Functions (CBFs), and connected graphs. The main elements employed in the integrative approach are an adaptive control design that ensures stability, a CBF-based safety filter that generates safe commands based on a reference model dynamics, and a reference model that ensures formation control with multi-agent systems when no uncertainties are present. The overall control design is shown to lead to a closed-loop adaptive system that is stable, avoids unsafe regions, and converges to a desired formation of the multi-agents. Numerical examples are provided to support the theoretical derivations.