EECI 2012: Verification of Control Protocols

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This lecture will present examples of the design and verification of protocol synthesis for distributed embedded systems in the context of autonomy. We begin with consideration of control protocols for cooperation and decision making in multi-agent systems, as illustrated by the RoboFlag example introduced in the first lecture. We show how to implement a simple protocol for distributed target assignment in a simplified version of the problem (the "RoboFlag drill") and prove stability of the protocol. We also look at distributed systems that involve a single vehicle (Alice) that is using multiple computers to implement its control functionality.

Lecture Materials

• Lecture notes: Verification of Control Protocols

Further Reading

• A Computation and Control Language for Multi-Vehicle Systems, E. Klavins. Int’l Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004.

• Distributed Algorithms for Cooperative Control, E. Klavins and R. M. Murray. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2004.