Specified-time Dynamic Target Autonomous Surrounding Formation for Multi-agent Network: A General Exploring Relationship

Existing work on the multiple target formation problem mostly focuses on the leader-follower network with one-to-one correspondence, which imposes a bit of strict assumptions on the interaction configuration. To realize this restriction, this paper considers a general leader-follower network with general exploring relationships and aims to solve the specified-time dynamic target autonomous surrounding formation (DT-DASF) problem. A sampling-data-based protocol is proposed with several formation configuration estimators, i.e., a convex hull estimator, a formation center estimator, a surrounding distance estimator, and a formation vector estimator. By time projection and motion planning method, it shows that the proposed estimator and protocol can drive followers to achieve surrounding formation within an appropriate surrounding distance and simultaneously encircle all dynamic targets at a specified time. A numerical simulation verifies the effectiveness of the theoretical result.