Distributed Pursuit of an Evader With Collision and Obstacle Avoidance.

The distributed, real-time algorithms for multiple pursuers cooperating to capture an evader are developed in an obstacle-free and an obstacle-cluttered environment, respectively. The developed algorithm is based on the idea of planning the control action within its safe, collision-free region for each robot. We initially present a greedy capturing strategy for an obstacle-free environment based on the Buffered Voronoi Cell (BVC). For an environment with obstacles, the obstacle-aware BVC (OABVC) is defined as the safe region, which considers the physical radius of each robot, and dynamically weights the Voronoi boundary between robot and obstacle to make it tangent to the obstacle. Each robot continually computes its safe cells and plans its control actions in a recursion fashion. In both cases, the pursuers successfully capture the evader with only relative positions of neighboring robots. A rigorous proof is provided to ensure the collision and obstacle avoidance during the pursuit-evasion games. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the developed algorithms.

Fixed-Time Leader-Follower Output Feedback Consensus for Second-Order Multiagent Systems.

This paper addresses the fixed-time leader-follower consensus problem for second-order multiagent systems without velocity measurement. A new continuous fixed-time distributed observer-based consensus protocol is developed to achieve consensus in a bounded finite time fully independent of initial condition. A rigorous stability proof of the multiagent systems by output feedback control is presented based on the bi-limit homogeneity and the Lyapunov technique. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed methodology is illustrated by numerical simulation.