Finite-Time Bearing-Only Formation Tracking of Heterogeneous Mobile Robots with Collision Avoidance

This brief proposes a bearing-only collision-free formation coordination strategy for networked heterogeneous robots, where each robot only measures the relative bearings of its neighbors to achieve cooperation. Different from many existing studies that can only guarantee global asymptotic stability (i.e., the formation can only be formed over an infinite settling period), a gradient-descent control protocol is designed to make the robots achieve a target formation within a given finite time. The stability of the multi-robot system is guaranteed via Lyapunov theory, and the convergence time can be defined by users. Moreover, we also present sufficient conditions for collision avoidance. Finally, a simulation case study is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.