This paper considers the problems of formation and obstacle avoidance for multiagent systems. The objective is to design a term of agents that can reach a desired formation while avoiding collision with obstacles. To reduce the amount of information interaction between agents and target, we adopt the leader-follower formation strategy. By using the receding horizon control(RHC), an optimal problem is formulated in terms of cost minimization under constraints. Information on obstacles is incorporated online as sensed in a limited sensing range. The communication requirements be-tween agents are that the followers should obtain the previous optimal control trajectory of the leader to each update time.The stability is guaranteed by adding a terminal-state penalty to the cost function and a terminal-state region to optimal problem. Finally, simulation studies are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.