Adaptive cooperative formation-containment control for networked Euler–Lagrange systems without using relative velocity information

This study is concerned with the problem of cooperative formation-containment control (CFCC) for networked Euler–Lagrange systems under a directed graph. Compared with the distributed containment control problem, CFCC problem is a new problem in the community of multi-agent systems as the control for leaders' formation is further considered. By introducing the desired relative distance between agents into the auxiliary variables, the formation control algorithms are designed firstly for multiple leaders to reach a constant configuration. Then, the distributed containment control algorithms are designed for the followers such that all followers asymptotically converge to the convex hull spanned by the leaders. In the proposed algorithms, the relative velocity information is not required for the agents' controller design. Moreover, to reduce the dependence on system global information, the control gains in the algorithms are changing adaptively using only local information. Finally, simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.