Distributed Event-Triggered Formation Control of Planar Vehicles Without Velocity Sensors

In this paper, an event-triggered distributed formation control method is proposed for multiple planar vehicles which are modeled as uncertain Euler-Lagrangian systems (ELSs). Firstly, a position and orientation (PAO)-based event-triggered mechanism is designed to decrease the frequency of data transmission through the wireless network. According to the PAO information at the event-triggered time, an event-triggered high-gain extended state observer (EHGESO) is developed to remove the demand of velocity information in conventional backstepping technique and eliminate the requirement of continuous PAO information in traditional HGESO design. Under the developed EHGESO and the PAO-based event-triggered mechanism, planar vehicles can cooperatively move along the parameterized path, and can transmit information with their neighbor vehicles only if the designed event-triggered mechanism is violated. The stability is proved by employing input-to-state stability (ISS) and semi-global uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB) stability theory. Eventually, a simulation of three-degree-of-freedom surface vehicle models is offered to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed control method.