On the design of Kalman Filter-Based Disturbance Observer For Stabilization of Rigid Formations

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel Kalman Filter-based Disturbance Observer for formation control of multi-agent systems with double integrator model using the notion of graph rigidity. Rigidity based formation control targets at achieving and maintaining a predefined geometric structure in space while satisfying the constraints on inter-agent distance, as well as circumventing the collision between the agents. In a practical scenario, the agents will be subjected to disturbances and hence fail in attaining the desired formation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to design a Kalman filter based observer to efficaciously estimate the disturbances and states, to provide appropriate modifications in the control law so as to achieve robust formation stabilisation. Simulation results validate the proposed method for both constant and time varying disturbances.