This book gives a self‐contained presentation of our research work in control of multi‐vehicle systems. Some materials have been adapted from a number of our publications. We acknowledge the IEEE, IET, AIAA, Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, and Taylor & Francis for granting us the permission to reuse materials from those publications. We also gratefully acknowledge the support for our research by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (grant no. RGPIN‐2017‐06708), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 61773095 and 61304016), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. ZYGX2016J161).

In particular, we acknowledge the following publishers for granting us the permission to reuse materials from our publications copyrighted by these publishers in the book:

• ©2008 IEEE. Norman H.M. Li and Hugh H.T. Liu, Formation UAV flight control using virtual structure and motion synchronization, the 2008 American Control Conference, Seattle, Washington, pp. 1782–1787, June 11–13, 2008 (material found in Section 2.1.2)
• ©2013 IEEE. B. Zhu, W. Sun, and C. Meng, Position tracking of multi double‐integrator dynamics by bounded distributed control without velocity measurements, the 2013 American Control Conference, Washington, DC, pp. 4033–4038, 2013. (material found in Section 4.4)
• ©2015 IEEE. C. Peng, B. Zhu, L. Yin, B. Yang, and C. Wang, Attitude synchronization of multiple 3‐DOF helicopters without angular velocity measurements by bounded distributed control, the 34th Chinese Control Conference, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, pp. 7196–7201, 2015 (material found in Section 4.4)
• ©2014 IEEE. B. Zhu, Z. Li, Hugh H.T. Liu, and H. Gao, Robust second‐order tracking of multi‐vehicle systems without velocity measurements on directed communication topologies, the 2014 American Control Conference, Portland, Oregon, pp. 5414–5419, 2014 (material found in Sections 4.5 and 5.4)
• ©2015 IEEE. Z. Li, Hugh H.T. Liu, B. Zhu, and H. Gao, Robust second‐order consensus tracking of multiple 3‐DOF laboratory helicopters via output‐feedback, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 20, no. 5, 2538–2549 (material found in Sections 5.5 and 9.5)
• ©2005 IET. Reproduced by permission of the Institution of Engineering & Technology J. Shan, Hugh H.T. Liu, and S. Nowotny, Synchronized trajectory tracking control of multiple 3‐DOF experimental helicopters, IEE Proceedings of Control Theory and Applications, vol. 152, pp. 683–692, 2005.(material found in Sections 5.6 and 9.3)
• ©2005 AIAA. J. Shan and Hugh H.T. Liu, Close formation flight control with motion synchronization, AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, vol. 28, AIAA‐13953‐980, pp. 1316–1320, 2005 (material found in Chapter 7)
• ©2016 AIAA. Q. Zhang, Hugh H.T. Liu. Robust design of close formation flight control via uncertainty and disturbance estimator, the 2016 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, San Diego, California, AIAA 2016‐2102, pp. 1–15, 2016 ( material found in Chapter 7)
• ©2007 ASME. Hugh H.T. Liu, J. Shan, and D. Sun, Adaptive synchronization control of multiple spacecraft formation flying, Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, vol. 129, pp. 337–342, 2007. (material found in Section 5.7 and Chapter 6)
• ©2015 Elsevier. B. Zhu, Hugh H.T. Liu, and Z. Li, Robust distributed attitude synchronization of multiple three‐DOF experimental helicopters, Control Engineering Practice, vol. 36, pp. 87–99, 2015 (material found in Sections 5.2 and 9.4)
• ©2016 Wiley. B. Zhu, C. Meng, and G. Hu, Robust consensus tracking of double integrator dynamics by bounded distributed control, International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 1489–1511, 2016 (material found in Sections 4.6 and 5.3)