Timothy Anglea

Timothy Anglea, Yongqiang Wang · meta-ai

Clock synchronization is a widely discussed topic in the engineering literature. Ensuring that individual clocks are closely aligned is important in network systems, since the correct timing of various events in a network is usually necessary for proper system implementation. However, many existing clock synchronization algorithms update clock values abruptly, resulting in discontinuous clocks which have been shown to lead to undesirable behavior. In this paper, we propose using the pulse-coupled oscillator model to guarantee clock continuity, demonstrating two general methods for achieving continuous phase evolution in any pulse-coupled oscillator network. We provide rigorous mathematical proof that the pulse-coupled oscillator algorithm is able to converge to the synchronized state when the phase continuity methods are applied. We provide simulation results supporting these proofs. We further investigate the convergence behavior of other pulse-coupled oscillator synchronization algorithms using the proposed methods.

Timothy Anglea, Yongqiang Wang

Decentralized heading control is crucial for robotic network operations such as surveillance, exploration, and cooperative construction. However, few results consider decentralized heading control when the speed of heading adjustment is restricted. In this paper, we propose a simple hybrid-dynamical model based on pulse-coupled oscillators for decentralized heading control in mobile robots while accounting for the constraint on the rate of heading change. The pulse-coupled oscillator model is effective in coordinating the phase of oscillator networks and hence is promising for robotic heading coordination given that both phase and heading evolve on the same one-dimensional torus. However, existing pulse-coupled oscillator results require the phase adjustment to be instantaneous, which cannot hold for robot heading adjustment due to physical limitations. We propose a generalization to the standard pulse-coupled oscillator model to allow for the phase to adjust at a finite rate, yet still have the oscillator network converge to the desired state, making our approach applicable to robotic heading coordination under rate constraints. We provide rigorous mathematical proof for the achievement of both synchronized and desynchronized heading relationships, and experimentally verify the results using extensive tests on a multi-robot platform.