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We address the design of decentralized feedback control laws inducing consensus and prescribed spatial patterns over a singular interacting particle system of Cucker-Smale type. The control design consists of a feedback term regulating the distance between each agent and preassigned subset of neighbours. Such a design represents a multidimensional extension of existing control laws for 1d platoon formation control. For the proposed controller we study consensus emergence, collision-avoidance and formation control features in terms of energy estimates for the closed-loop system. Numerical experiments in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions assess the different features of the proposed design.

In this paper, we study a formation control scheme for a 1-D string of vehicles. Each member tracks the movement of its immediate predecessor but also the first vehicle tracks the position of the last member of the string. We discuss conditions for the stability of the full interconnected system and show that if a constant spacing policy is used, the stability of the system is lost after the string size exceeds a certain number depending on the model parameters (vehicles and controllers). Additionally, we study the use of a constant time headway spacing policy. If the associated time headway parameter is greater than a critical value, the interconnected system is stable and string stable for any string size. Finally, we show that if an independent leader vehicle is added to the formation and every follower has access to this leader position, the cyclic formation with a constant spacing policy can be made stable and string stable by appropriately selecting a design parameter.

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For vehicle platoons, the leader following control structure is well known for being capable of achieving string stability. In this paper, the linear string case is modified so that each follower tracks the instantaneous velocity of the leader in addition to the position of its predecessor. We show that it is possible to achieve string stability, under some basic assumptions, with this approach. We also discuss some of the benefits of the use of this method such as lowered coordination requirements and simplified communication needs.