Decentralized control of cooperative robotic vehicles: theory and application

Abstract

Abstract-This paper describes how decentralized control theory can be used to analyze the control of multiple cooperative robotic vehicles. Models of cooperation are discussed and related to the input/output reachability, structural observability, and controllability of the entire system. Whereas decentralized control research in the past has concentrated on using decentralized controllers to partition complex physically interconnected systems, this work uses decentralized methods to connect otherwise independent nontouching robotic vehicles so that they behave in a stable, coordinated fashion. A vector Liapunov method is used to prove stability of two examples: the controlled motion of multiple vehicles along a line and the controlled motion of multiple vehicles in formation. Also presented are three applications of this theory: controlling a formation, guarding a perimeter, and surrounding a facility.

On the controllability of nearest neighbor interconnections

“…More reactive, behavioral schemes were employed in [17], [18], [19], [20] to shape formations of vehicles. The investigation of "structural controllability" in [21] is close to the problem discussed in this paper.…”

Stability Analysis and Implementation of a Decentralized Formation Control Strategy for Unmanned Vehicles

“…Moreover, paper [26] proposed a Lyapunovbased approach to give a sufficient condition to make all the agents converge to a common value, and a common Lyapunov function was explicitly constructed in the case of switching jointly connected topologies. In [27], a combination of the above two strategies was employed, where a few concepts from graph theory were borrowed to evaluate the controllability and observability of the individual system and a vector Lyapunov method was then applied to prove the stability of the multivehicle formation.…”

Convergence and Collision Avoidance in Formation Control: A Survey of the Artificial Potential Functions Approach

“…Chen & Wang (2005) suggest to consider the formation control as a regulation problem, a well known concept in control theory. As mentioned above, the goal is the design of decentralized schemes based on the following assumptions: a) every agent knows its desired position on the group but not the goals of the others and b) every robot knows only the position of a certain subset of robots to converge to the desired formation (Dimarogonas, Kyriakopoulos & Theodorakatos (2006);Feddema et al (2002)). However, there is no general consensus to delimit the decentralized schemes.…”