Efficient Consensus-based Formation Control With Discrete-Time Broadcast Updates
For multi-agent systems, this work addresses the problem of saving wireless resources (bandwidth, energy) in formation control, but it is incremental as it combines existing consensus and WMAC concepts.
The paper proposes a consensus-based formation control strategy for autonomous agents that uses discrete-time broadcast updates to reduce wireless resource consumption, with a proof of convergence and simulation results demonstrating effectiveness.
This paper presents a consensus-based formation control strategy for autonomous agents moving in the plane with continuous-time single integrator dynamics. In order to save wireless resources (bandwidth, energy, etc), the designed controller exploits the superposition property of the wireless channel. A communication system, which is based on the Wireless Multiple Access Channel (WMAC) model and can deal with the presence of a fading channel is designed. Agents access the channel with simultaneous broadcasts at synchronous update times. A continuous-time controller with discrete-time updates is proposed. A proof of convergence is given and simulations are shown, demonstrating the effectiveness of the suggested approach.