Similarity Decomposition Approach to Oscillatory Synchronization for Multiple Mechanical Systems With a Virtual Leader

This paper addresses the oscillatory synchronization problem for multiple uncertain mechanical systems with a virtual leader, and the interaction topology among them is assumed to contain a directed spanning tree. We propose an adaptive control scheme to achieve the goal of oscillatory synchronization. Using the similarity decomposition approach, we show that the position and velocity synchronization errors between each mechanical system (or follower) and the virtual leader converge to zero. The performance of the proposed adaptive scheme is shown by numerical simulation results.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, published in 2014 Chinese Control Conferenc

A Survey on Aerial Swarm Robotics

The use of aerial swarms to solve real-world problems has been increasing steadily, accompanied by falling prices and improving performance of communication, sensing, and processing hardware. The commoditization of hardware has reduced unit costs, thereby lowering the barriers to entry to the field of aerial swarm robotics. A key enabling technology for swarms is the family of algorithms that allow the individual members of the swarm to communicate and allocate tasks amongst themselves, plan their trajectories, and coordinate their flight in such a way that the overall objectives of the swarm are achieved efficiently. These algorithms, often organized in a hierarchical fashion, endow the swarm with autonomy at every level, and the role of a human operator can be reduced, in principle, to interactions at a higher level without direct intervention. This technology depends on the clever and innovative application of theoretical tools from control and estimation. This paper reviews the state of the art of these theoretical tools, specifically focusing on how they have been developed for, and applied to, aerial swarms. Aerial swarms differ from swarms of ground-based vehicles in two respects: they operate in a three-dimensional space and the dynamics of individual vehicles adds an extra layer of complexity. We review dynamic modeling and conditions for stability and controllability that are essential in order to achieve cooperative flight and distributed sensing. The main sections of this paper focus on major results covering trajectory generation, task allocation, adversarial control, distributed sensing, monitoring, and mapping. Wherever possible, we indicate how the physics and subsystem technologies of aerial robots are brought to bear on these individual areas

Steering laws for distributed motion coordination of kinematic agents in three dimensions

We develop a systematic approach to synthesize distributed control laws for motion coordination in a group of constant-speed kinematic rigid bodies. Parallel and balanced circular formations of mobile agents moving in a three dimensional space are studied, and provably correct steering laws are presented. The resulting steering laws have simple geometric intuitions which are based on the structure of each particular formation

Adaptive group consensus of coupled harmonic oscillators with multiple leaders

In this paper, we investigate the group consensus of coupled harmonic oscillators with multiple leaders in an undirected fixed network. Unlike many existing algorithms for group consensus of multi-agent systems or cluster synchronization of complex dynamical networks, which require global information of the underlying network such as the eigenvalues of the coupling matrix or centralized control protocols, we propose a novel decentralized adaptive group consensus algorithm for coupled harmonic oscillators. By using the decentralized adaptive group consensus algorithm and without using any global information of the underlying network, all agents in the same group asymptotically synchronize with the corresponding leader even when only one agent in each group has access to the information of the corresponding leader. Numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2012 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Second-Order Consensus of Networked Mechanical Systems With Communication Delays

In this paper, we consider the second-order consensus problem for networked mechanical systems subjected to nonuniform communication delays, and the mechanical systems are assumed to interact on a general directed topology. We propose an adaptive controller plus a distributed velocity observer to realize the objective of second-order consensus. It is shown that both the positions and velocities of the mechanical agents synchronize, and furthermore, the velocities of the mechanical agents converge to the scaled weighted average value of their initial ones. We further demonstrate that the proposed second-order consensus scheme can be used to solve the leader-follower synchronization problem with a constant-velocity leader and under constant communication delays. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed adaptive controllers.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Contro