A Game-Based Approach to Distributed Least-Distance Formation Tracking With a Moving Target

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shi, Jun; Ye, Maojiao; Ding, Lei; Xu, Shengyuan; Han, Qing-Long
• 署名单位: Nanjing University of Science & Technology; Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications; Swinburne University of Technology
• 刊物名称: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0018-9286
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2025.3558136
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 6404-6419
• 关键词: Target tracking; optimization; Protocols; Symmetric matrices; Nash equilibrium; games; vectors; shape; Formation control; Quadrotors; Game-based formulation; least-distance formation tracking; moving target; Nash equilibrium seeking

摘要

This article is concerned with game-based distributed least-distance formation tracking with a moving target. More specifically, the agents aim to form a desired shape while enclosing a moving target with a least overall distance. Different from most of the existing results on formation tracking, the key challenge for least-distance formation tracking under consideration is that the distances between the agents and the target are not required to be predefined but are autonomously adjusted by solving a distance optimization problem. In particular, with the target being moving, the distance optimization problem is time-varying. To address this issue, a game-based formulation of distributed least-distance formation tracking is first presented, where first- and second-order integrator-type agents are taken into account, respectively. Then, under the scenario in which all the agents know the position of the moving target, a new distributed Nash equilibrium seeking strategy that can be utilized to achieve distributed least-distance formation is constructed based on gradient search algorithms, regularization techniques and consensus protocols. Moreover, when it is further considered that only a subset of the agents can access the information of the moving target, a leader-following tracking protocol is introduced to estimate unknown information distributively. It is theoretically shown that the proposed strategies can globally steer the agents to form a desired shape while minimizing the overall distance to the moving target. Finally, the effectiveness of the established strategies is verified by, respectively, conducting simulation studies for a network of vehicles and quadrotors.