This paper reviews some main results and progress in distributed multi-agent coordination, focusing on papers published in major control systems and robotics journals since 2006. Distributed coordination of multiple vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles, and unmanned underwater vehicles, has been a very active research subject studied extensively by the systems and control community. The recent results in this area are categorized into several directions, such as consensus, formation control, optimization, and estimation. After the review, a short discussion section is included to summarize the existing research and to propose several promising research directions along with some open problems that are deemed important for further investigations.

/pdf/an-overview-of-recent-progress-in-the-study-of-distributed-1xnb6e12se.pdf

An Overview of Recent Progress in the Study of Distributed Multi-Agent Coordination

This article reviews some main results and progress in distributed multi-agent coordination, focusing on papers published in major control systems and robotics journals since 2006. Distributed coordination of multiple vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles, has been a very active research subject studied extensively by the systems and control community. The recent results in this area are categorized into several directions, such as consensus, formation control, optimization, task assignment, and estimation. After the review, a short discussion section is included to summarize the existing research and to propose several promising research directions along with some open problems that are deemed important for further investigations.

An Overview of Recent Progress in the Study of Distributed Multi-agent Coordination

This technical brief considers the distributed consensus problems for multi-agent systems with general linear and Lipschitz nonlinear dynamics. Distributed relative-state consensus protocols with an adaptive law for adjusting the coupling weights between neighboring agents are designed for both the linear and nonlinear cases, under which consensus is reached for all undirected connected communication graphs. Extensions to the case with a leader-follower communication graph are further studied. In contrast to the existing results in the literature, the adaptive consensus protocols here can be implemented by each agent in a fully distributed fashion without using any global information.

Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems With General Linear and Lipschitz Nonlinear Dynamics Using Distributed Adaptive Protocols

In this paper, we mainly review the topics in consensus and coordination of multi-agent systems, which have received a tremendous surge of interest and progressed rapidly in the past few years. Focusing on different kinds of constraints on the controller and the self-dynamics of each individual agent, as well as the coordination schemes, we categorize the recent results into the following directions: consensus with constraints, event-based consensus, consensus over signed networks, and consensus of heterogeneous agents. We also review some applications of the very well developed consensus algorithms to the topics such as economic dispatch problem in smart grid and k -means clustering algorithms.

Recent Advances in Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems: A Brief Survey

We review a general class of models for self-organized dynamics based on alignment. The dynamics of such systems is governed solely by interactions among individuals or “agents,” with the tendency to adjust to their “environmental averages.” This, in turn, leads to the formation of clusters, e.g., colonies of ants, flocks of birds, parties of people, rendezvous in mobile networks, etc. A natural question which arises in this context is to ask when and how clusters emerge through the self-alignment of agents, and what types of “rules of engagement” influence the formation of such clusters. Of particular interest to us are cases in which the self-organized behavior tends to concentrate into one cluster, reflecting a consensus of opinions, flocking of birds, fish, or cells, rendezvous of mobile agents, and, in general, concentration of other traits intrinsic to the dynamics. Many standard models for self-organized dynamics in social, biological, and physical sciences assume that the intensity of alignment in...

https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/144966/content/120901866.pdf

Heterophilious Dynamics Enhances Consensus

Brief paper: Novel decentralized adaptive strategies for the synchronization of complex networks

Analysis and stability of consensus in networked control systems

A method for identifying regions of instability in closed-loop systems has been developed for flight dynamics applications. This forms a novel approach in which a surface of equilibria is generated in the region of interest as the influence of the control system is increased. In this way, the creation and destruction of equilibria in the controlled system can be easily found and visualized. This systematic approach allows the stability of the closed- loop system to be directly related to that of the open loop. Results are given for a highly nonlinear aircraft model and demonstrate the power of a combined analytical and graphical approach to control system synthesis. flight dynamics model. We believe that there is great deal of poten- tial in the use of continuation methods in the design and analysis of gain-scheduled feedback control systems. They allow us to address systems with significant nonlinearity and in particular multivalued steady states. The essence of this paper is to consider the application of a gain-scheduled state feedback controller to an aircraft. Contin- uation algorithms are used for two purposes within this paper: 1) to create pseudocontinuous gain schedules throughout a wide oper- ating region and 2) to create surfaces of state equilibria that show changes in the global behavior of the system ranging from the open- loop to the closed-loop configurations. The first step in this approach is to create pseudocontinuous gain functions that satisfy the design criteria at equilibrium throughout the desired operating region of the nonlinear system. Given suf- ficient control authority, these allow the dynamic response of the desired branch of equilibria to be specified. This paper formalizes a continuation approach to gain scheduling using standard feedback control design terminology. The second step is to determine the global implications of this gain-scheduled controller. A novel approach is adopted in which three-dimensional bifurcation surfaces of equilibria are found as both the reference signal and the controller gains are varied. This powerful technique illustrates graphically the influence of the con- trol system and is shown to be invaluable in the evaluation of the global stability of the system. These bifurcation surfaces can be used to indentify undesired attractors within the closed-loop system. The creation of equilibrium surfaces in terms of the variation in control system gain is an entirely new concept in aircraft controller design and allows a tradeoff between local and more global properties of the closed-loop system. These methods are demonstrated using a highly nonlinear air- craft model, the hypothetical high angle of incidence research model (HHIRM). 8 Aircraft dynamics are complex, incorporating nonlin- earities as a result of many factors such as inertial coupling be- tween the different degrees of freedom and aerodynamic forces and moments. 9

Design of a Gain Scheduled Flight Control System Using Bifurcation Analysis

In this paper, we present a distributed Proportional-Integral (PI) strategy with self-tuning adaptive gains for reaching asymptotic consensus in networks of non-identical linear agents under constant disturbances. Alternative adaptive strategies are presented, based on global or local measures of the agents' disagreement. The proposed approaches are validated on a representative numerical example. Preliminary analytical results further confirm the viability of the self-tuning strategies.

Mario diBernardo

Papers

Brief paper: Novel decentralized adaptive strategies for the synchronization of complex networks

Analysis and stability of consensus in networked control systems

Design of a Gain Scheduled Flight Control System Using Bifurcation Analysis

Self-tuning proportional integral control for consensus in heterogeneous multi-agent systems

Achieving consensus and synchronization by adapting the network topology