Information Flow and Cooperative Control of Vehicle Formations

J. Alexander Fax and Richard M. Murray
2002 IFAC World Congress

Vehicles in formation often lack global information regarding the state of all the vehicles, a deficiency which can lead to instability and poor performance. In this paper, we demonstrate how exchange of minimal amounts of information between vehicles can be designed to realize a dynamical system which supplies each vehicle with a shared reference trajectory. When the information flow law is placed in the control loop, a separation principle is proven which guarantees stability of the formation and convergence of the information flow law regardless of the information flow topology.

• Conference Paper: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~murray/preprints/fm02b-ifac.pdf
• Project(s): Template:HTDB funding::AFOSR/coop