EECI09: Distributed control

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In this lecture we introduce the problem of distributed control of a multi-agent system. As an analysis tool, 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 consider several design paradigms for decentralized and distributed control systems.

Lecture Materials

• Lecture slides: Title

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.

• S. K. Mitter and A. Sahai, "Information and control: Witsenhausen revisited," in Learning, Control and Hybrid Systems: Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences 241, Y. Yamamoto and S. Hara, Eds. New York, NY: Springer, 1999, pp. 281-293.

• "On the Synthesis of Control Laws for a Network of Autonomous Agents", V. Gupta, B. Hassibi and R. M. Murray, Proceedings of the American Control Conference 2004, vol. 6, pp. 4927-4932, 2004.

• "Distributed Control Design for Systems Interconnected over an Arbitrary Graph", C. Langbort, R. S. Chandra and R. D'Andrea, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 49, no. 9, pp. 1502-1519, Sep. 2004.

• "A Characterization of Convex Problems in Decentralized Control", M. Rotkowitz and S. Lall, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 51, no. 2, pp.274-286, Feb. 2006.