Multi-Agent Distributed Coordination Control: Developments and Directions

In this paper, the recent developments on distributed coordination control, especially the consensus and formation control, are summarized with the graph theory playing a central role, in order to present a cohesive overview of the multi-agent distributed coordination control, together with brief reviews of some closely related issues including rendezvous/alignment, swarming/flocking and containment control.In terms of the consensus problem, the recent results on consensus for the agents with different dynamics from first-order, second-order to high-order linear and nonlinear dynamics, under different communication conditions, such as cases with/without switching communication topology and varying time-delays, are reviewed, in which the algebraic graph theory is very useful in the protocol designs, stability proofs and converging analysis. In terms of the formation control problem, after reviewing the results of the algebraic graph theory employed in the formation control, we mainly pay attention to the developments of the rigid and persistent graphs. With the notions of rigidity and persistence, the formation transformation, splitting and reconstruction can be completed, and consequently the range-based formation control laws are designed with the least required information in order to maintain a formation rigid/persistent. Afterwards, the recent results on rendezvous/alignment, swarming/flocking and containment control, which are very closely related to consensus and formation control, are briefly introduced, in order to present an integrated view of the graph theory used in the coordination control problem. Finally, towards the practical applications, some directions possibly deserving investigation in coordination control are raised as well.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure

Nonlinear Consensus Strategies for Multi-Agent Networks in Presence of Communication Delays and Switching Topologies: Real-Time Receding Horizon Approach

This paper presents a novel framework which combines a non-iterative solution of Real-Time Nonlinear Receding Horizon Control (NRHC) methodology to achieve consensus within complex network topologies with existing time-delays and in presence of switching topologies. In this formulation, we solve the distributed nonlinear optimization problem for multi-agent network systems directly, \emph{in real-time}, without any dependency on iterative processes, where the stability and convergence guarantees are provided for the solution. Three benchmark examples on non-linear chaotic systems provide validated results which demonstrate the significant outcomes of such methodology.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures (under review). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1510.0779

Decentralized Event-Triggered Consensus over Unreliable Communication Networks

This article studies distributed event-triggered consensus over unreliable communication channels. Communication is unreliable in the sense that the broadcast channel from one agent to its neighbors can drop the event-triggered packets of information, where the transmitting agent is unaware that the packet was not received and the receiving agents have no knowledge of the transmitted packet. Additionally, packets that successfully arrive at their destination may suffer from time-varying communication delays. In this paper, we consider directed graphs, and we also relax the consistency on the packet dropouts and the delays. Relaxing consistency means that the delays and dropouts for a packet broadcast by one agent can be different for each receiving node. We show that even under this challenging scenario, agents can reach consensus asymptotically while reducing transmissions of measurements based on the proposed event-triggered consensus protocol. In addition, positive inter-event times are obtained which guarantee that Zeno behavior does not occur.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Distributed consensus of linear MASs with an unknown leader via a predictive extended state observer considering input delay and disturbances

The problem of disturbance rejection/attenuation for constant-input delayed linear multi-agent systems (MASs) with the directed communication topology is tackled in this paper, where a classic model reduction technique is introduced to transform the delayed MAS into the delay-free one. First, when the leader has no control input, a novel adaptive predictive extended state observer (ESO) using only relative state information of neighboring agents is designed to achieve disturbance-rejected consensus tracking. The stabilization analysis is presented via the Lyapunov function and sufficient conditions are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Then the result is extended to the disturbance-attenuated case where the leader has bounded control input which is only known by a portion of followers. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed strategies. The main contribution focuses on the design of adaptive predictive ESO protocols with the fully distributed property.Comment: 18 page

Consensus of second order multi-agents with actuator saturation and asynchronous time-delays

This article presents the consensus of a saturated second order multi-agent system with non-switching dynamics that can be represented by a directed graph. The system is affected by data processing (input delay) and communication time-delays that are assumed to be asynchronous. The agents have saturation nonlinearities, each of them is approximated into separate linear and nonlinear elements. Nonlinear elements are represented by describing functions. Describing functions and stability of linear elements are used to estimate the existence of limit cycles in the system with multiple control laws. Stability analysis of the linear element is performed using Lyapunov-Krasovskii functions and frequency domain analysis. A comparison of pros and cons of both the analyses with respect to time-delay ranges, applicability and computation complexity is presented. Simulation and corresponding hardware implementation results are demonstrated to support theoretical results.Comment: 10 page

Containment Control of Second-order Multi-agent Systems Under Directed Graphs and Communication Constraints

The distributed coordination problem of multi-agent systems is addressed in this paper under the assumption of intermittent communication between agents in the presence of time-varying communication delays. Specifically, we consider the containment control problem of second-order multi-agent systems with multiple dynamic leaders under a directed interconnection graph topology. Also, communication between agents is performed only at some discrete instants of time in the presence of irregular communication delays and packet dropout. First, we present distributed control algorithms for double integrator dynamics in the full and partial state feedback cases. Then, we propose a method to extend our results to second-order systems with locally Lipschitz nonlinear dynamics. In both cases, we show that the proposed approach leads to our control objectives under sufficient conditions relating the characteristics of the communication process and the control gains. We also show that our approach can be applied to solve various similar coordination problems in multi-agent systems under the same communication constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed control schemes is illustrated through some examples and numerical simulations.Comment: Modified version. Paper submitted for publicatio

Dynamic Output Feedback Guaranteed-Cost Synchronization for Multiagent Networks with Given Cost Budgets

The current paper addresses the distributed guaranteed-cost synchronization problems for general high-order linear multiagent networks. Existing works on the guaranteed-cost synchronization usually require all state information of neighboring agents and cannot give the cost budget previously. For both leaderless and leader-following interaction topologies, the current paper firstly proposes a dynamic output feedback synchronization protocol with guaranteed-cost constraints, which can realize the tradeoff design between the energy consumption and the synchronization regulation performance with the given cost budget. Then, according to different structure features of interaction topologies, leaderless and leader-following guaranteed-cost synchronization analysis and design criteria are presented, respectively, and an algorithm is proposed to deal with the impacts of nonlinear terms by using both synchronization analysis and design criteria. Especially, an explicit expression of the synchronization function is shown for leaderless cases, which is independent of protocol states and the given cost budget. Finally, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate theoretical results.Comment: 12 page

On the Synchronization of Second-Order Nonlinear Systems with Communication Constraints

This paper studies the synchronization problem of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with intermittent communication in the presence of irregular communication delays and possible information loss. The control objective is to steer all systems' positions to a common position with a prescribed desired velocity available to only some leaders. Based on the small-gain framework, we propose a synchronization scheme relying on an intermittent information exchange protocol in the presence of time delays and possible packet dropout. We show that our control objectives are achieved with a simple selection of the control gains provided that the directed graph, describing the interconnection between all systems (or agents), contains a spanning tree. The example of Euler-Lagrange systems is considered to illustrate the application and effectiveness of the proposed approach.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures. Submitted for journal publicatio

Consensus tracking in multi agent system with nonlinear and non identical dynamics via event driven sliding modes

In this work, leader follower consensus objective has been addressed with the synthesis of an event based controller utilizing sliding mode robust control. The schema has been partitioned into two parts viz. finite time consensus problem and event triggered control mechanism. A nonlinear multi agent system with non identical dynamics has been put forward to illustrate the robust capabilities of the proposed control. The first part incorporates matching of states of the followers with those of the leader via consensus tracking algorithm. In the subsequent part, an event triggered rule is devised to save computational power and restrict periodic updating of the controller involved while ensuring desired closed loop performance of the system. Switching of the event based controller is achieved via sliding mode control. Advantage of using switched controller like sliding mode is that it retains its inherent robustness as well as event triggering approach aids in saving energy expenditure. Efficacy of the proposed scheme is confirmed via numerical simulations.Comment: preprint, "IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Coordination Control of Heterogeneous Compounded-Order Multi-Agent Systems with Communication Delays

Since the complexity of the practical environment, many distributed networked systems can not be illustrated with the integer-order dynamics and only be described as the fractional-order dynamics. Suppose multi-agent systems will show the individual diversity with difference agents, where the heterogeneous (integer-order and fractional-order) dynamics are used to illustrate the agent systems and compose integer-fractional compounded-order systems. Applying Laplace transform and frequency domain theory of the fractional-order operator, consensus of delayed multi-agent systems with directed weighted topologies is studied. Since integer-order model is the special case of fractional-order model, the results in this paper can be extend to the systems with integer-order models. Finally, numerical examples are used to verify our results.Comment: 15pages, 4figure