Bearing-Only Formation Tracking Control for Euler-Lagrange Multi-Agent Systems Without Inter-Agent Communication

Abstract

This paper investigates communication-free bearing-only formation tracking control for multi-agent systems governed by Euler-Lagrange dynamics. Distinct from existing results that can only stabilize a stationary formation, this work considers a scenario where the leaders move with time-varying velocities while the inter-agent communication is absent. In this setup, the leaders' states (position and velocity) are unavailable to all followers and cannot be estimated via distributed observers. A novel adaptive distributed control scheme is developed to address this problem. The design exploits the fact that bearing rates contain the projected relative-velocity information, which, together with bearing rigidity, provides a rigidity-based damping mechanism for compensating the unavailable velocity error. Moreover, this damping mechanism is incorporated into a bearing-driven auxiliary variable to construct a surrogate velocity error, facilitating the adaptive control design for EL dynamics. Furthermore, since this damping mechanism necessitates sufficient bearing rigidity, we characterize a rigidity-preserving set and establish its forward invariance, thereby guaranteeing such rigidity via initial conditions. Via a Filippov-based Lyapunov analysis, the proposed scheme is shown to achieve local practical formation tracking in the sense that the velocity error converges to zero and the position error is uniformly ultimately bounded. As a corollary, for the constant-velocity case, asymptotic tracking is achieved without initial-condition restriction. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control law.