Decoupled Dynamics Distributed Control for Strings of Nonlinear Autonomous Agents
This work addresses the challenge of scalable distributed control for multi-agent systems in formation, offering a solution that decouples controller design per agent.
The paper introduces a distributed control architecture for heterogeneous nonlinear agents in a string formation that guarantees trajectory tracking, collision avoidance, and topology preservation. The scheme's performance is independent of the number of agents and their positions, enabling scalability through decoupled closed-loop dynamics.
We introduce a distributed control architecture for a class of heterogeneous, nonlinear dynamical agents moving in the "string" formation, while guaranteeing trajectory tracking, collision avoidance and the preservation of the formation's topology. Each autonomous agent uses information and relative measurements only with respect to its predecessor in the string. The performance of the scheme is independent of the number of agents in the network and also on the agent's relative position in the network. The scalability is a consequence of the "decoupling" of a certain bounded approximation of the closed--loop equations, which allows the regulation and controller design (at each agent) to be done individually, in a completely decentralized manner. A practical method for compensating communication induced delays is also presented. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness and the main features of the proposed approach.