Cooperative Constrained Control of Distributed Agents With Nonlinear Dynamics and Delayed Information Exchange: A Stabilizing Receding-Horizon Approach

• Published in: IEEE transactions on automatic control Vol. 53; no. 1; pp. 324 - 338
• Main Authors: Franco, E., Magni, L., Parisini, T., Polycarpou, M.M., Raimondo, D.M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Centralized control; Computation; Constrained systems; Control system synthesis; Control systems; Control theory; Cooperative control; Cost function; Delay; Distributed control; Large-scale systems; Laws; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; model predictive control; Nonlinear control systems; Nonlinear dynamics; nonlinear systems; receding-horizon control; Sensor systems and applications; Stability analysis
• ISSN: 0018-9286; 1558-2523
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2007.914956

This paper addresses the problem of cooperative control of a team of distributed agents with decoupled nonlinear discrete-time dynamics, which operate in a common environment and exchange-delayed information between them. Each agent is assumed to evolve in discrete-time, based on locally computed control laws, which are computed by exchanging delayed state information with a subset of neighboring agents. The cooperative control problem is formulated in a receding-horizon framework, where the control laws depend on the local state variables (feedback action) and on delayed information gathered from cooperating neighboring agents (feedforward action). A rigorous stability analysis exploiting the input-to-state stability properties of the receding-horizon local control laws is carried out. The stability of the team of agents is then proved by utilizing small-gain theorem results.