Formation control on a closed curve under an intermittent measurement flow

In this letter we propose a distributed estimation and control strategy to balance a multi-agent system along a closed-curve. Each agent in the formation has a limited sensing range, such that a noisy measurement of the Euclidean distance from its neighbors is collected only when they are sufficiently close. We frame this problem in the challenging setting in which, when the formation is balanced, no measurement can be further obtained. An additional hurdle for control is that, even when the Euclidean distance between a pair of agent is measured, this blackwould be compatible with a finite interval of distances along the curve. To cope with these challenges, we make a synergistic design of blacka decentralized non-cooperative estimation and control law, and prove that a balanced formation is achieved. We complement the analysis with numerical simulations demonstrating the performance of the proposed scheme.