A Fixed-time Formation-containment Control Scheme for Multi-agent Systems with Motion Planning: Applications to Quadcopter UAVs

This paper proposes a fixed-time formation-containment tracking control scheme with a safe and reliable motion planning strategy. A practical scenario is considered where no agents have prior environmental knowledge, and only a subgroup of agents, defined as leaders, is equipped with obstacle-detection sensors. The primary objective is to drive agents towards the goal position while safely avoiding unknown obstacles and navigating through choke points. First, we ensure that the leader agents achieve a prescribed formation within a fixed time, and then, the follower agents converge inside a convex hull spanned by the leaders. After that, motion planning and choke point navigation algorithms are developed to achieve group obstacle avoidance and choke point navigation missions. The results demonstrate that networked agents could safely move towards the goal positions, effectively navigating unknown obstacles and manoeuvring through choke points, even when obstacle-detection sensors are limited to leader agents. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme were validated through an in-depth simulation case study and real-time flight experiments on a multi-UAV system.