Collective control of multiple unicycle agents with non-identical constant speeds: Tracking control and performance limitation

This paper discusses collective control of multiple unicycle-type vehicles with nonholonomic constraints and non-identical constant speeds, with focus on the design of a tracking controller for a desired target's position and velocity. The tracking control task is divided into several sub-tasks. The group centroid is controlled to track a desired reference velocity, while the reference velocity is constructed with information from the target's position and velocity so that the group centroid can successfully track both the position and velocity of a target vehicle. In order to keep all the agents close to the centroid within a reasonable spacing, an additive spacing controller is devised. We also discuss in detail the performance limitation and trade-offs of the tracking control due to the constraint of non-identical and constant speeds in such a heterogeneous agent group.