Synchronization of multiple rigid body systems: a survey

The multi-agent system has been a hot topic in the past few decades owing to its lower cost, higher robustness, and higher flexibility. As a particular multi-agent system, the multiple rigid body system received a growing interest since its wide applications in transportation, aerospace, and ocean exploration. Due to the non-Euclidean configuration space of attitudes and the inherent nonlinearity of the dynamics of rigid body systems, synchronization of multiple rigid body systems is quite challenging. This paper aims to present an overview of the recent progress in synchronization of multiple rigid body systems from the view of two fundamental problems. The first problem focuses on attitude synchronization, while the second one focuses on cooperative motion control in that rotation and translation dynamics are coupled. Finally, a summary and future directions are given in the conclusion

An Overview of Recent Progress in the Study of Distributed Multi-agent Coordination

This article reviews some main results and progress in distributed multi-agent coordination, focusing on papers published in major control systems and robotics journals since 2006. Distributed coordination of multiple vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles, has been a very active research subject studied extensively by the systems and control community. The recent results in this area are categorized into several directions, such as consensus, formation control, optimization, task assignment, and estimation. After the review, a short discussion section is included to summarize the existing research and to propose several promising research directions along with some open problems that are deemed important for further investigations

Cooperative Control of Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent systems have attracted great interest due to their potential applications in a variety of areas. In this dissertation, a nonlinear consensus algorithm is developed for networked Euler-Lagrange multi-agent systems. The proposed consensus algorithm guarantees that all agents can reach a common state in the workspace. Meanwhile, the external disturbances and structural uncertainties are fundamentally considered in the controller design. The robustness of the proposed consensus algorithm is then demonstrated in the stability analysis. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus algorithm. Next, a distributed leader-follower formation tracking controller is developed for networked nonlinear multi-agent systems. The dynamics of each agent are modeled by Euler-Lagrange equations, and all agents are guaranteed to track a desired time-varying trajectory in the presence of noise. The fault diagnosis strategy of the nonlinear multi-agent system is also investigated with the help of differential geometry tools. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through simulations. To further extend the application area of the multi-agent technique, a distributed robust controller is then developed for networked Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems. With the appearance of system uncertainties and external disturbances, a sampled-data feedback control protocol is carried out through the Lyapunov functional approach. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified by numerical simulations. Other than the robustness and sampled-data information exchange, this dissertation is also concerned with the event-triggered consensus problem for the Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems. Furthermore, the sufficient condition for the stochastic stabilization of the networked control system is proposed based on the Lyapunov functional method. Finally, simulation is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm. In this dissertation, the cooperative control of networked Euler-Lagrange systems and networked Lipschitz systems is investigated essentially with the assistance of nonlinear control theory and diverse controller design techniques. The main objective of this work is to propose realizable control algorithms for nonlinear multi-agent systems