Distributed multi‐vehicle coordinated control via local information exchange

Abstract This paper describes a distributed coordination scheme with local information exchange for multiple vehicle systems. We introduce second‐order consensus protocols that take into account motions of the information states and their derivatives, extending first‐order protocols from the literature. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which consensus can be reached in the context of unidirectional information exchange topologies. This work takes into account the general case where information flow may be unidirectional due to sensors with limited fields of view or vehicles with directed, power‐constrained communication links. Unlike the first‐order case, we show that having a…