Communications in Information and Systems

Volume 11 (2011)

Number 2

Coordinated fault tolerant optimal control of autonomous agents: geometry and communication architecture

Pages: 173 – 196

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4310/CIS.2011.v11.n2.a5

Authors

Ryan O. Abel (Department of of Electrical Computer Engineering, University of Iowa)

Soura Dasgupta (Department of of Electrical Computer Engineering, University of Iowa)

Jon G. Kuhl (Department of of Electrical Computer Engineering, University of Iowa)

Abstract

A one step ahead optimization based control of autonomous agents is proposed. Each agent is modeled as a double integrator. We only define a geometric topology for the agent formation, and by correctly choosing the cost function, show that our algorithm produces a communication topology mirroring the geometric topology. By providing some redundancy in the formation topology it is possible for the system to survive the loss of an agent. Other attractions of the scheme are scalability, the requirement of only local knowledge of the desired formation topology and ease of reconfiguration in the face of loss of agents and/or channels.

Published 30 March 2011