Privacy-Preserving and Collision-Free Formation Control for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems

This article proposes a secure time-varying formation (TVF) control framework for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (HMASs) operating under the threats of communication eavesdropping, non-cooperative dynamic obstacles, and input saturation. The framework integrates cyber-layer and physical-layer components that collaboratively address these challenging conditions. In the cyber-layer, an intermittent privacy-preserving observer is designed, which fuses periodic activation with a threat-based dynamic triggering strategy. This design effectively mitigates eavesdropping risks while resolving the irreversibility dilemma inherent in static masking techniques. At the physical-layer, the controller is formulated as a quadratic programming problem integrating Lyapunov functions and control barrier functions. It ensures the operational safety of high-order heterogeneous agents in environments with obstacles and input saturation. The effectiveness and advantages of the proposed framework are demonstrated through simulations on a heterogeneous system consisting of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).