Formation Control of Multi-Agent Systems using Continuum Models

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Meurer
• Subject Area: Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 266006167

This project aims at developing new methods for decentralized formation planning and formation control of interconnected multi-agent systems based on continuum models. With this, contrary to the classical discrete approach, where the dynamics of the multi-agent system is determined by the specification of the communication topology and the relative weighting of the exchange data, the global system dynamics is a priori imposed in terms of partial (integro-) differential equations. Differing from the Eulerian perspective which is based on spatial and time-varying density distributions the proposed setting makes use of an explicit formulation in the agent position or velocity, respectively, with the independent spatial coordinate representing the continuous communication path. This distributed-parameter description of a multi-agent continuum serves as basis for control design with the desire to achieve finite time transitions between formation profiles along prescribed transition paths taking into account collision avoidance. For this, the project will focus on the extension and suitable combination of flatness-based methods for motion planning and feedforward control and backstepping methods for the stabilization of the tracking error dynamics. The consideration of continuum models implies independence of the design from the actual communication topology. The latter is imposed by proper structure-preserving discretization techniques which directly enable to realize the control design and the respective closed-loop dynamics at the level of interconnected individual agents. The developed methods will be evaluated based on simulation studies for actuator and sensor networks or swarms, respectively, as well as validated experimentally for a network of mobile robots.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants