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Distributed multi‐vehicle coordinated control via local information exchange
Author(s) -
Ren Wei,
Atkins Ella
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international journal of robust and nonlinear control
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1099-1239
pISSN - 1049-8923
DOI - 10.1002/rnc.1147
Subject(s) - information exchange , network topology , computer science , context (archaeology) , distributed computing , information flow , order (exchange) , control (management) , topology (electrical circuits) , consensus , multi agent system , computer network , mathematics , artificial intelligence , telecommunications , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , finance , combinatorics , economics , biology
This paper describes a distributed coordination scheme with local information exchange for multiple vehicle systems. We introduce second‐order consensus protocols that take into account motions of the information states and their derivatives, extending first‐order protocols from the literature. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which consensus can be reached in the context of unidirectional information exchange topologies. This work takes into account the general case where information flow may be unidirectional due to sensors with limited fields of view or vehicles with directed, power‐constrained communication links. Unlike the first‐order case, we show that having a (directed) spanning tree is a necessary rather than a sufficient condition for consensus seeking with second‐order dynamics. This work focuses on a formal analysis of information exchange topologies that permit second‐order consensus. Given its importance to the stability of the coordinated system, an analysis of the consensus term control gains is also presented, specifically the strength of the information states relative to their derivatives. As an illustrative example, consensus protocols are applied to coordinate the movements of multiple mobile robots. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.