Distributed Target Co-Surveillance using Local Bearing Measurements by Multiple Unicycles
Ziwen Yang, Wenbin Yu, Shanying Zhu · 2025
In this paper, we investigate the problem of formation control for unicycles in the context of co-surveillance of an unknown target, where only local bearing angles are available for observation. Traditional approaches to target enclosing often rely on constant angular velocity conditions, which impose stringent requirements on the system. To address this limitation, we propose a novel, fully distributed control strategy that operates without explicit communication between agents. By relaxing the constant angular velocity condition to a Persistently Exciting(PE) condition, our method enables unicycles to achieve coordinated and cooperative formations through the observation topology of a directed spanning tree. This approach leverages offline parameter selection, significantly reducing the perception and computational demands on individual unicycles while maintaining effective collaboration. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method is scalable and flexible, offering a practical solution for applications in multi-agent systems with limited sensing capabilities. Numerical examples validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.