EECI08: Formation Control in Multi-Agent Systems

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In this lecture we introduce the problem of cooperative control of a multi-agent system. As an initial problem, we consider the problem of cooperation among a collection of vehicles performing a shared task using intervehicle communication to coordinate their actions. We prove a Nyquist criterion that uses the eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian matrix to determine the effect of the communication topology on formation stability. We also summarize recent extensions to this work using distributed receding horizon control.

Lecture Materials

• Lecture slides: Cooperative Control

Further Reading

• J. A. Fax and R. M. Murray, "Information flow and cooperative control of vehicle formations", IEEE T. Automatic Control, 49(9):1465-1476, 2004.

• R. M. Murray, “Recent Research in Cooperative Control of Multi-Vehicle Systems”, J. Guidance, Control and Dynamics, 2007.

• W. B. Dunbar and R. M. Murray, "Distributed receding horizon control for multi-vehicle formation stabilization". Automatica, 42(4):549--558, 2006.