Distributed Estimation of State and Parameters in Multi-Agent Cooperative Load Manipulation
This work addresses the challenge of cooperative load manipulation in multi-agent systems, which is incremental as it builds on existing distributed estimation and control techniques.
The paper tackles the problem of estimating kinematic and dynamic parameters as well as the kinematic state of an unknown planar body manipulated by a decentralized multi-agent system, presenting two distributed methods that rely on rigid body kinematics, nonlinear observation theory, and consensus algorithms, with effectiveness demonstrated through realistic Monte Carlo simulations.
We present two distributed methods for the estimation of the kinematic parameters, the dynamic parameters, and the kinematic state of an unknown planar body manipulated by a decentralized multi-agent system. The proposed approaches rely on the rigid body kinematics and dynamics, on nonlinear observation theory, and on consensus algorithms. The only three requirements are that each agent can exert a 2D wrench on the load, it can measure the velocity of its contact point, and that the communication graph is connected. Both theoretical nonlinear observability analysis and convergence proofs are provided. The first method assumes constant parameters while the second one can deal with time-varying parameters and can be applied in parallel to any task-oriented control law. For the cases in which a control law is not provided, we propose a distributed and safe control strategy satisfying the observability condition. The effectiveness and robustness of the estimation strategy is showcased by means of realistic MonteCarlo simulations.