  This paper investigates a distributed goal assignment problem in
leader-following formation control of second-order multi-agent systems. It is
assumed that each agent can communicate with nearby agents within the
communication range and the leader information is only available to a subset of
agents. Compared with existing formation control schemes addressing the goal
assignment issue, the main contribution of this paper is to construct a novel
distributed assignment strategy allotting appropriate goal positions of agents
in the leader-following formation control framework. Based on the rigorous
analysis using the Lyapunov stability theory, the enhancement of the control
performance is proved via the proposed assignment strategy. To demonstrate the
effectiveness of our theoretical results, two examples including multiple
quadrotors are simulated.
