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 paper is an overview of current gyroscopes and their roles based on their applications. The considered gyroscopes include mechanical gyroscopes and optical gyroscopes at macro- and micro-scale. Particularly, gyroscope technologies commercially available, such as Mechanical Gyroscopes, silicon MEMS Gyroscopes, Ring Laser Gyroscopes (RLGs) and Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes (FOGs), are discussed. The main features of these gyroscopes and their technologies are linked to their performance.

Gyroscope Technology and Applications: A Review in the Industrial Perspective

The overall deterioration of the national civil infrastructure due to aging and usage beyond the anticipated loads and lifetimes for which it was designed, combined with the increasing cost of maintenance and repair, has resulted in the need for improved techniques for non-destructive evaluation of the structural health of reinforced concrete. A recent review of the available statistics reveals that almost 40% of United States bridges are ‘structurally deficient’ or ‘functionally obsolete’ [1]. New reinforced concrete constructions would also benefit from in situ structural monitors which could detect a decrease in performance or imminent failure, thereby optimizing lifetimes without compromising safety. Finally, although modeling the behavior of some structures made from well-characterized materials is fairly accurate, the use of new materials, unusually complex designs, or variability in strength-related factors such as void fraction or moisture content can lead to unexpected structural weakening, damage or failure. The inadequacy of the nation’s highways, bridges, etc. prompted the initiation in 1993 of a National Science Foundation program, with the goal of developing new technologies aimed at ‘prolonging the life and enhancing the capacity of our existing and future civil infrastructure systems’ [2]. In response to the increased need, various techniques are being developed, and some of the most promising are based on the use of fiber optic sensors (FOS).

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0964-1726/5/2/008/pdf

Fiber optic sensors in concrete structures: a review

The glider coordinated control system (GCCS) uses a detailed glider model for prediction and a simple particle model for planning to steer a fleet of underwater gliders to a set of coordinated trajectories. The GCCS also serves as a simulation testbed for the design and evaluation of multivehicle control laws. In this brief, we describe the GCCS and present experimental results for a virtual deployment in Monterey Bay, CA and a real deployment in Buzzards Bay, MA.

Cooperative Control for Ocean Sampling: The Glider Coordinated Control System

The goal of control law design for haptic displays is to provide a safe and stable user interface while maximizing the operator's sense of kinesthetic immersion in a virtual environment. This paper outlines a control design approach which stabilizes a haptic interface when coupled to a broad class of human operators and virtual environments. Two-port absolute stability criteria are used to develop explicit control law design bounds for two different haptic display implementations: the impedance display and admittance display. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are illustrated through numerical and experimental results for a three degree-of-freedom device. The example highlights the ability of the proposed design procedure to handle some of the more difficult problems in control law synthesis for haptics, including structural flexibility and noncollocation of sensors and actuators.

Control law design for haptic interfaces to virtual reality

Ieee transactions on control systems technology

Apparatus for measuring a physical quantity such as pressure, temperature, strain etc., by using a beat frequency of a longitudinal mode, a transverse mode or two polarization modes of the optical fiber laser. In the rare-earth optical fiber laser as a resonator, there are two different polarization modes normal to each other. Since the optical path lengths of the optical fiber laser for the two polarization modes are different, longitudinal mode frequencies of each polarization mode are different depending on the birefringence of resonator which is varied as an external physical quantity such as pressure, temperature, strain etc. Due to the variation in the birefringence of the resonator, the longitudinal mode frequency difference between two polarization modes becomes varied. This variation is linearly proportional to the physical quantity externally applied. The difference in longitudinal mode frequency between polarization modes can be measured from a beat signal of the polarization modes. Accordingly, it is possible to measure the physical quantity by measuring the variation in polarization mode beat frequency.

https://koasas.kaist.ac.kr/bitstream/10203/21069/1/Polarimetric%20fiber%20laser%20sensors.pdf

Polarimetric fiber laser sensors

We report an approach to the control of the longitudinal mode structure in erbium-doped fiber lasers that uses saturable absorbers and the spatial hole-burning effect in the laser cavity. Two- and three-mode fiber lasers are successfully demonstrated, and the laser output properties are compared with theoretical calculations.

Longitudinal mode control in few-mode erbium-doped fiber lasers

We study threshold features of a Brillouin-shifted Stokes comb generated in a distributed fiber Raman amplifier. When the input power of Brillouin pump is linearly increased in high Raman gain, the first Stokes wave grows exponentially at much lower threshold power and then experiences an appreciable power decrease in the vicinity of the Brillouin comb's threshold. This power reduction of the first Brillouin Stokes, which we did not see mentioned in previous reports, was caused by a power transfer to higher-order lines and initiated Brillouin comb generation. Moreover, the effects of Raman pump power and pumping direction on the threshold of a Brillouin comb are investigated.

Threshold features of a Brillouin Stokes comb generated in a distributed fiber Raman amplifier

A stable single-frequency fiber ring laser is proposed that operates in a single mode for more than an hour by incorporating unpumped erbium-doped fiber (EDF) as a saturable absorber filter and optimizing the length of EDF used as gain medium. This laser can be continuously tuned to 25-GHz spacing that precisely matches the ITU-T grids by temperature control of etalon filter. This laser had a signal-to-source spontaneous emission ratio higher than 70 dB, and lasing frequencies of 361 channels was matched to ITU-T grids with excellent flatness. Frequency offset from the ITU-T grid was less than 0.14 GHz. The linewidth and the relative intensity noise value was less than 1.3 kHz and 130 dB/Hz (above 250 kHz), respectively.

Seung Kwan Kim

Papers

Ieee transactions on control systems technology

Polarimetric fiber laser sensors

Longitudinal mode control in few-mode erbium-doped fiber lasers

Threshold features of a Brillouin Stokes comb generated in a distributed fiber Raman amplifier

Stable single-frequency fiber ring laser for 25-GHz ITU-T grids utilizing saturable absorber filter