Distributed filtering for switched nonlinear positive systems with missing measurements over sensor networks

In this paper, the distributed filtering problem is investigated for a class of switched nonlinear positive systems over sensor networks. The randomly varying nonlinearities and missing measurements, which are governed by two mutually independent Bernoulli distributed white sequences, are taken into account. Based on the output measurements of the individual sensor and its neighbors, the distributed filter with positivity constraint is designed to ensure the prescribed average l∞ performance index of the estimation error dynamics. Special attention is paid to preserve the positivity of the underlying system as well as the sparseness of the addressed network topology. Sufficient conditions are established on the existence of the desired filters by using the linear programming approach, and the filter gains are subsequently characterized. A simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed filtering method.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61104114, Grant 61201035, Grant 61374070, and Grant 61473055 and in part by the Liaoning Province Science Foundation under Grant 2015020075 and in part by the General Projects for Science Research in the Liaoning Province under Grant L2014026

High-Order Leader-Follower Tracking Control under Limited Information Availability

Limited information availability represents a fundamental challenge for control of multi-agent systems, since an agent often lacks sensing capabilities to measure certain states of its own and can exchange data only with its neighbors. The challenge becomes even greater when agents are governed by high-order dynamics. The present work is motivated to conduct control design for linear and nonlinear high-order leader-follower multi-agent systems in a context where only the first state of an agent is measured. To address this open challenge, we develop novel distributed observers to enable followers to reconstruct unmeasured or unknown quantities about themselves and the leader and on such a basis, build observer-based tracking control approaches. We analyze the convergence properties of the proposed approaches and validate their performance through simulation

Exponential stability for formation control systems with generalized controllers: A unified approach

This paper discusses generalized controllers for distance-based rigid formation shape stabilization and aims to provide a unified approach for the convergence analysis. We consider two types of formation control systems according to different characterizations of target formations: minimally rigid target formation and non-minimally rigid target formation. For the former case, we firstly prove the local exponential stability for rigid formation systems when using a general form of shape controllers with certain properties. From this viewpoint, different formation controllers proposed in previous literature can be included in a unified framework. We then extend the result to the case that the target formation is non-minimally rigid, and show that exponential stability of the formation system is still guaranteed with generalized controllers

Distributed formation tracking using local coordinate systems

This paper studies the formation tracking problem for multi-agent systems, for which a distributed estimator–controller scheme is designed relying only on the agents’ local coordinate systems such that the centroid of the controlled formation tracks a given trajectory. By introducing a gradient descent term into the estimator, the explicit knowledge of the bound of the agents’ speed is not necessary in contrast to existing works, and each agent is able to compute the centroid of the whole formation in finite time. Then, based on the centroid estimation, a distributed control algorithm is proposed to render the formation tracking and stabilization errors to converge to zero, respectively. Finally, numerical simulations are carried to validate our proposed framework for solving the formation tracking problem

Decentralized cooperative tracking subject to motion constraints

This paper addresses the formation control problem, where three agents are tasked with moving an object cooperatively along a desired trajectory while also adjusting its posture to some desired attitudes, i.e. position and attitude tracking. Two decentralized control laws based on locally available information are proposed. The first control law maintains constant inter-agent distances over time, i.e. the formation of agents moves as a single rigid-body. The second control law relaxes this constraint by only maintaining similarity of the agent formation as a polygon in Euclidean space

Distributed Tracking Control Design for Leader-Follower Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent systems (MASs) have been widely recognized as a key way to model, analyze, and engineer numerous kinds of complex systems composed of distributed agents. The aim of this dissertation is to study control design for leader-follower MASs such that a group of followers can track a specified leader via distributed decision making based on distributed information. We identify and consider several critical problems that have stood in the way of distributed tracking control synthesis and analysis. Specifically, they include: 1) limited information access by the followers to the leader, 2) effects of external disturbances, 3) complicated dynamics of agents, and 4) energy efficiency. To overcome the first three problems, we take a lead with the design of distributed-observer-based control, with the insight that distributed observers can enable agents to recover unknown quantities in a collective manner for the purpose of control. To deal with the fourth problem, we propose the first study of MAS tracking control conscious of nonlinear battery dynamics to increase operation time and range. The dissertation will present the following research contributions. First, we propose the notion of designing distributed observers to make all the followers aware of the leader's state and driving input, regardless of the network communication topology, and perform tracking controller design based on the observers. Second, we further develop distributed disturbance observers and observer-based robust tracking control to handle the scenario when all the leader and followers are affected by unknown disturbances only bounded in rates of change. The third contribution lies in treating a leader-follower MAS with high-order, nonlinear dynamics. Assuming the availability of very limited measurement data, we substantively expand the idea of observer-based control to develop a catalog of distributed observers such that the followers can reconstruct large amounts of information necessary for effective tracking control. Finally, we propose a distributed predictive optimization method to integrate onboard battery management with tracking control for long-endurance operation of an electric-powered MAS. The proposed dissertation research offers new insights and a set of novel tools to enhance the control performance of leader-follower MASs. The results also have a promise to find potential applications in other types of MASs

Target-point formation control

In this paper a new distributed feedback strategy is proposed for controlling a rigid, acyclic formation of kinematic point-modeled mobile autonomous agents in the plane. The strategy makes use of a new concept called a "target point" and is applicable to any two-dimensional, acyclic formation whose underlying directed graph can be generated by a sequence of Henneberg vertex additions. It is shown that the method can cause a group of agents starting in any given initial positions in the plane to move into a prescribed formation exponentially fast provided the formation's designated leader and first follower start in different positions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved