Cooperative Coordination and Formation Control for Multi-agent Systems

189 Pages·2018·4.873 MB·English

by  Zhiyong Sun (auth.)

Springer Theses
Recognizing Outstanding Ph.D. Research
Zhiyong Sun

Cooperative
Coordination and
Formation Control
for Multi-agent
Systems
Springer Theses
Recognizing Outstanding Ph.D. Research
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Zhiyong Sun
Cooperative Coordination
and Formation Control
for Multi-agent Systems
Doctoral Thesis accepted by
The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
123
Author Supervisor
Dr. ZhiyongSun Prof. BrianD.O.Anderson
Research Schoolof Engineering Research Schoolof Engineering
TheAustralian National University TheAustralian National University
Canberra Canberra
Australia Australia
ISSN 2190-5053 ISSN 2190-5061 (electronic)
SpringerTheses
ISBN978-3-319-74264-9 ISBN978-3-319-74265-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74265-6
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“From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a
horse,andahundredsuspicionsdon’tmakea
proof…”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and
Punishment (Chapter II of Part VI)
“To begin well is common;
To end well is rare indeed.”
—The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry1
(Shi-jing, published c. 600 BC)
1TranslatedfromoldChinesebyArthurWaley.
To my family: my parents, my younger
brother (Zhigang) and my younger sister
(Yanting)
’
Supervisor s Foreword
Most people would know that drones are being used for an increasing number of
tasks. What is less well known is that for some time already, formations of drones
have also been used. Their prime purpose up to now has been to localize targets
(a name which does not necessarily connote something at which bullets are shot)
but can encompass a person in the sea needing rescuing, or an illegal fishing boat.
Thekeyfunctionaldifferentiatorforaformationasopposedtoasingledroneisthat
aformationeffectively canconstitutealargeantenna,andlargeantennasaremuch
more capable at tasks like direction finding than small antennas. Several cheap
vehiclesspreadoutinaformationmaybemuchmoreeffectivethanasinglevehicle
costing 100 or even 1000 times as much as a cheap vehicle.
These days, drone formations performing surveillance typically have a modest
numberofvehicles,perhapsuptosix.Butmotivatedbywhatnatureshowsuswith
flocks of birds, one can imagine much larger drone formations, such as might be
used in a few years to search a burning building. Firemen could release 200
microvehiclesfromacanisterwhichwouldorganizethemselvesintoasensingand
communicating network, reporting, for example, on the location of individuals
needing to be rescued.
Today’s and the future technology of drone formations bring a number of
questions. How should a formation shape be preserved, while at the same time
moving in a certain direction? If you have a hundred vehicles, who should look at
whom,whatshouldtheysense,whatinformationshouldtheycommunicatetoeach
other, and what exactly should an individual vehicle do in order that a whole
formation shape be retained?
The answers to these questions also need to be reflective of technological
constraints. Drones have limited payload. Drones flying indoors or in building
canyonsmaynothaveGPS.Dronescanonlycommunicatewithotherdroneswhich
are sufficiently close, but on the other hand must not collide and so on.
This thesis comes to grips with some of these questions. While ultimately
motivated by potential drone applications, the scenarios considered are, for the
purposesofdevelopingbasicscientificideasasthisthesisdoes,idealized,atleastat
the beginning of the thesis.
ix
x Supervisor’sForeword
There are three broad thrusts of the thesis. The beginning part focuses on a
formationstabilityquestion:howcanaformationshapebemaintained?Itturnsout
thatsomeformationshapesareunstablewhenintuitivelyappealingcontrollawsare
used; that is, a slight perturbation can give rise to a progressive collapse of the
desired inter-vehicle relationships and loss of the formation shape. Identifying
circumstanceswhenthisisboundtooccur,oneofthecontributionsofthethesisin
this direction is extremely valuable. One practical conclusion is that the mainte-
nance of a planar formation (i.e. a single plane passes through the centroids of all
the vehicles) can pose particular difficulties.
As noted above, the thesis starts by considering idealized models, but a second
broad thrust of the thesis involves exploring departures from the ideal. In engi-
neeringterms,thisconstitutesanexaminationofrobustness,ortheabilitytosustain
at least approximately a given style offormation operation or performance in the
face of departures from the idealizing assumptions. Having ensured, for example,
that a three-agent formation forms an equilateral triangle symmetrically placed
aboutastraight-linedirectioninwhichitisflying,onemustconsiderwhathappens
andpropose corrective action,if disturbancessuch aswindperturbtheorientation.
Likewise,ifsensingdevicesgiverisetoquantizationerror,oriftwovehiclesAand
Bmeasuretherangetotheothervehiclewithdifferentaccuracyandaresupposedto
maintainafixedspacing,thentoavoidseriousmisperformancecorrectiveactionis
necessary.
Adifferentsenseinwhichthethesisbeginswithidealizedmodelsisgroundedin
thesimplicityofthemodelusedforanindividualagent.Formuchofthethesis,the
modelisthatofasimpleintegrator.Newton’slawspromptconsiderationofatleast
a second-order model, and the notion of a unicycle model from robotics is also a
drivertoconsidermoresophisticatedagentmodels.Thisisdonewithinthethesisas
thethirdmajorcontribution.Indeed,thethesiselegantlyexplainshowmanyofthe
results obtained for single integrator models can be carried over to more compli-
cated models. Furthermore, motivated by practical applications of coordinating
fixed-wingunmannedaerialvehiclesthatflymostlyatnominalconstantspeed,the
thesis also addresses a fundamental problem of deriving feasible formations, by
incorporating very general kinematics constraints arising from different robotic
dynamics in a group.
Overall, the thesis represents a distillation of some four years of research,
reportedovercloseto30papers.Thatnumberofpapersreflectsthelargenumberof
ideas spawned by multiagent formation models and in part explains the length
ofthethesis.Thethesisisexceptionallywellwritten,intermsoflogicalflowofthe
ideas as well as the use of technical English and mathematics. Readers will enjoy
the clear style of thewriter, who has set a remarkably high barfor future students,
while at the same time making a very substantial contribution to the scientific
literature.
Canberra, Australia Prof. Brian D. O. Anderson
June 2017
:
Parts of this thesis have been published in the following articles
Refereed Journal Papers
1. Z. Sun, S. Mou, B. D. O. Anderson, and A. S. Morse. Rigid motions of 3-D
undirected formations with mismatch between desired distances. IEEE
Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 62, No. 8, pp. 4151–4158, 2017.
2. Z.Sun,M.-C.Park,B.D.O.Anderson,andH.-S.Ahn.Distributedstabilization
control of rigid formations with prescribed orientation. Automatica, vol. 78,
No. 4, pp. 250–257, 2017. Full version available at arXiv http://arxiv.org/abs/
1606.03199.
3. Z.Sun,B.D.O.Anderson,M.Deghat,andH.-S.Ahn.Rigidformationcontrol
of double-integrator systems. International Journal of Control, vol. 90, No. 7,
pp. 1403–1419, 2017.
4. Z. Sun, S. Mou, B. D. O. Anderson, and M. Cao. Exponential stability for
formation control systems with generalized controllers: a unified approach.
Systems and Control Letters, vol. 93, pp. 50–57, 2016.
Refereed Conference Papers
5. Z. Sun, H. Garcia de Marina, B. D. O. Anderson, and M. Cao. Quantization
effects in rigid formation control. Proc. of the 6th Australian Control
Conference (AUCC’16), pp. 168–173, Newcastle, Australia, 2016.
6. Z.SunandB.D.O.Anderson.Formationfeasibilityoncoordinationcontrolof
networked heterogeneous systems with drift terms. Proc. of the 55th IEEE
Conference on Decision and Control (CDC’16), pp. 3462–3467, Las Vegas,
USA, 2016.
7. Z. Sun, U. Helmke and B. D. O. Anderson. Rigid formation shape control in
general dimensions: an invariance principle and open problems. Proc. of the
54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC’15), pp. 6095–6100,
Osaka, Japan, 2015 (Best Student Paper Award Finalist).
8. Z.Sun,Q.Liu,C.YuandB.D.O.Anderson.Generalizedcontrollersforrigid
formationstabilizationwith applicationtoevent-based controllerdesign.Proc.
of the European Control Conference (ECC’15), pp. 217–222, Linz, Austria,
2015.
9. Z. Sun and B. D. O. Anderson. Rigid formation control systems modelled by
double integrators: system dynamics and convergence analysis. Proc. of the
2015 Australian Control Conference (AUCC’15), pp. 241–246, Gold Coast,
Australia, 2015 (Best Student Paper Award Winner).
10. Z. Sun and B. D. O. Anderson. Rigid formation control with prescribed ori-
entation. Proc. of the 2015 IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control
(MSC’15), pp. 639–645, Sydney, Australia, 2015.
xi