Cooperative target fencing of multiple double‐integrator systems with connectivity preservation

Abstract

In this article, we study the cooperative target‐fencing problem of multiple double‐integrator systems over a state‐dependent communication network. We propose a distributed control law to asymptotically fence a moving target while achieving both collision avoidance and connectivity preservation of the vehicles. In particular, a distributed observer is employed by each vehicle to estimate the position and the velocity of the target. Compared with the existing results, our approach can accommodate a larger class of target's trajectories. Furthermore, our control law is more practical since we do not require all vehicles to know the trajectory of the target. The effectiveness of our approach is illustrated by a numerical example.