Distributed formation control with orientation alignment

This paper investigates the distributed control strategy based on inter-agent displacements for achieving desired formation and trajectory tracking. Unlike traditional methods that rely on the global reference frame, the proposed strategy addresses the challenge posed by agents with diverse initial orientations. The orientation controller is proposed to align the local reference frame of each agent, enabling the use of relative position for effective controller design. The proposed distributed formation controller leverages the orientation to ensure the multi-agent system achieves the desired formation configuration while accurately tracking the reference trajectory. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, numerical simulation results are provided for the single-integrator system.