We consider a gradient climbing problem where the objective is to steer a group of vehicles to the extrema of an unknown scalar field distribution while keeping a prescribed formation. We address this problem by developing a scheme in which the leader performs extremum seeking for the minima or maxima of the field, and other vehicles follow according to passivity-based coordination rules. The extremum-seeking approach generates approximate gradients of the field locally by "dithering" sensor positions. We show that if there is sufficient time-scale separation between the fast dither and slow gradient motions of the leader vehicle, the followers only respond to the gradient motion, and filter out the dither component.
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