A cyclic pursuit framework for networked mobile agents based on vector field approach

This paper proposes a pursuit formation control scheme for a network of double-integrator mobile agents based on a vector field approach. In a leaderless architecture, each agent pursues another one via a cyclic topology to achieve a regular polygon formation. On the other hand, the agents are exposed to a rotational vector field such that they rotate around the vector field centroid, while they keep the regular polygon formation. The main problem of existing approaches in the literature for cyclic pursuit of double-integrator multiagent systems is that under those approaches, the swarm angular velocity and centroid are not controllable based on missions and agents capabilities. However, by employing the proposed vector field approach in this paper, while keeping a regular polygon formation, the swarm angular velocity and centroid can be determined arbitrary. The obtained results can be extended to achieve elliptical formations with cyclic pursuit as well. Simulation results for a team of eight mobile agents verify the accuracy of the proposed control scheme.     

分布式防火墙系统的研究与实现

在本文中，首先分析了传统防火墙的不足，进而引出分布式防火墙的概念，并简要阐述了分布式防火墙的基本原理。接着设计了一个分布式防火墙体系结构，并分析了这一结构的主要特点。最后详细描述了分布式防火墙系统中两大核心组件即安全管理中心和主机防火墙的结构设计及功能实现。     

Attack resilient strategy for event-triggered distributed control scheme of multi-energy systems

In recent years, distributed algorithms have been increasingly used to solve the economic dispatch (ED) problem of multi-energy systems (MES) due to the advantages of high flexibility, strong robustness, and privacy. However, the MES based on the distributed optimization architecture must bear higher cyber-attack risks, so as to maintain the safe and stable operation of MES. To address this issue, an event-triggered fully distributed algorithm is proposed to solve the ED problem, which can effectively mitigate the communication burden. On this basis, an attack resilient strategy against false data injection (FDI) attacks is implemented in the proposed fully distributed algorithm, which can eliminate incorrect measurement of incremental cost and power generation data caused by cyber-attacks. In addition, a reputation value protocol embedded in the proposed attack resilient strategy is designed to effectively reduce the potential of direct isolation of the node. Finally, case studies are given in this paper to validate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed control scheme on a 9-bus MES.     

Sparsely distributed sliding mode control for interconnected systems

This paper proposes a framework for the design of sparsely distributed output feedback discrete-time sliding mode control (ODSMC) for interconnected systems. The major target here is to develop an observer based discrete-time sliding mode controller employing a sparsely distributed control network structure in which local controllers exploit some other sub-systems’ information as well as its own local information. As the local controllers/observers have access to some other sub-systems’ states, the control performance will be improved and the applicability region will be widened compared to the decentralised structure. As the first step, a stability condition is derived for the overall closed-loop system obtained from applying ODSMC to the underlying interconnected system, by assuming a priori known structure for the control/observer network. The developed LMI based controller design scheme provides the possibility to employ different information patterns such as fully distributed, sparsely distributed and decentralised patterns. In the second step, we propose a methodology to identify a sparse control/observer network structure with the least possible number of communication links that satisfies the stability condition given in the first step. The boundedness of the obtained overall closed-loop system is analysed and a bound is derived for the augmented system state which includes the closed-loop system state and the switching function.     

Human-swarm collaboration with coverage control under nonidentical and limited sensory ranges

Human intelligence plays a significant role in the operation of a multi-agent system. This study proposes a control framework that allows a human operator to collaboratively interact with a swarm robot to accomplish environmental exploration, detection, and coverage. A r_i-limited Voronoi partition is proposed herein for improving the all-territory sensing range for coverage control. Subsequently, an interactive control framework and control algorithms are presented for an abstract task function that allows a human operator to control the movement of a swarm robot in a working environment. Environmental information is fed back to the master devices so that the human operator can realize the swarm robots coverage control situation. Stability and position tracking with static coverage control and input-to-state stability with dynamic coverage control of the human-swarm system are investigated. The efficiency and efficacy of the proposed system are validated via numerical examples and experiments.     

Distributed formation control of double-integrator fractional-order multi-agent systems with relative damping and nonuniform time-delays

In this paper, distributed formation control problems are studied for double-integrator fractional-order multi-agent systems (DIFOMASs) with relative damping and nonuniform time-delays. The required state deviations of a group of multi-agent systems are achieved through a local state information interaction, which means that this group of multi-agent systems achieves formation control. In the context of this paper, the dynamic model is first established and the formation control protocol is designed for distributed formation control of DIFOMASs with relative damping under symmetric time-delays and asymmetric time-delays. Then, some sufficient conditions for achieving distributed formation control of DIFOMASs are acquired with the help of graph theory, matrix theory, stability theory and frequency-domain theory. In the end, two simulation examples are performed to verify the efficacy of our proposed method.     

Distributed impulsive control for heterogeneous multi-agent systems based on event-triggered scheme

In this paper, the distributed impulsive control for heterogeneous multi-agent systems based on event-triggered approach is investigated. According to whether the information transfer of the dynamic compensator is continuous or not, two different kinds of impulsive controllers are designed, respectively. Based on these two kinds of controllers, the corresponding distributed event-triggered conditions are provided, which make the impulsive instants of all agents do not need occur simultaneously. Moreover, the lower bound of impulsive intervals can also be guaranteed for all the event-triggered conditions, which means that the control schemes given in this paper can avoid the Zeno-behavior successfully. Eventually, a simulation example is proposed to support the effectiveness of the results obtained in this paper.     

Total sliding-mode-based particle swarm optimization control for linear induction motor

In this study, a total sliding-mode-based particle swarm optimization control (TSPSOC) scheme is designed for the periodic motion control of an indirect field-oriented linear induction motor (LIM) drive. First, an indirect field-oriented mechanism for a LIM drive is introduced to preserve the decoupling control characteristic. Then, the concept of total sliding-mode control (TSC) is incorporated into particle swarm optimization (PSO) to form an on-line TSPSOC framework for preserving the robust control characteristics and reducing the chattering control phenomena of TSC. Moreover, an adaptive inertial weight is devised to accelerate the searching speed effectively. In this control scheme, a PSO control system is utilized to be the major controller, and the stability can be indirectly ensured by the concept of TSC without strict constraint and detailed system knowledge. With the proposed TSPSOC system, the mover position of the controlled LIM drive possesses the advantages of favorable robust characteristic, control effort without chattering, and simple control framework. Numerical simulations and experimental results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for the tracking of periodic reference trajectories. In addition, the superiority of the proposed TSPSOC scheme is indicated in comparison with the TSC, Petri fuzzy-neural-network control (PFNNC) and traditional fuzzy-neural-network control (TFNNC) systems.     

Distributed bearing-based formation control of networked thrust-propelled vehicles

In this paper, the distributed bearing-based formation control problem of networked thrust-propelled vehicles (TPVs) is addressed, in which both the constant and time-varying velocity leaders are considered, respectively. By introducing a reference acceleration and adaptive control scheme for the followers, the mass knowledge is not necessary in contrast to the existing works. Based on the designed reference accelerations, distributed adaptive control laws are proposed for the networked TPVs. Then the stabilization conditions are presented and an inner-bearing prescribed formation can be achieved. Under the proposed control laws, the leader-follower formation maneuver problem for networked TPVs with system uncertainties can be solved. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control laws.     

Distributed formation-aggregation control algorithm for a cluster of quadrotors

This paper focuses on the solution to a formation-aggregation problem concerned with a cluster of quadrotors. In particular, all the quadrotors are steered towards a target region while reaching an expected formation configuration. However, only a subset of quadrotors, treated as leaders, have access to the projections onto the target region; and in the meantime, each quadrotor just exchanges information with its neighbors. It is assumed that the quadrotors without the knowledge of the target region, treated as followers, are within the convex hull of the leaders in the expected configuration. A distributed formation-aggregation control algorithm is proposed under the hierarchical framework. To be specific, resorting to an auxiliary dynamic system with a distributed idea, a command force is first synthesized in the position loop for the concerned formation-aggregation objective. Next, an applied thrust and a command attitude are extracted from the synthesized command force. Finally, an applied torque is synthesized in the attitude loop such that the attitude tracking to the command one is realized. In terms of the Lyapunov theory, it is shown that the leaders are capable of guiding the overall quadrotor cluster into the target region in the expected configuration. Simulations are carried out to validate the theoretical results.     

A case study of distributed information retrieval architectures to index one terabyte of text

The increasing number of documents to be indexed in many environments (Web, intranets, digital libraries) and the limitations of a single centralised index (lack of scalability, server overloading and failures), lead to the use of distributed information retrieval systems to efficiently search and locate the desired information. This work is a case study of different architectures for a distributed information retrieval system, in order to provide a guide to approximate the optimal architecture with a specific set of resources. We analyse the effectiveness of a distributed, replicated and clustered architecture simulating a variable number of workstations (from 1 up to 4096). A collection of approximately 94 million documents and 1 terabyte (TB) of text is used to test the performance of the different architectures. In a purely distributed information retrieval system, the brokers become the bottleneck due to the high number of local answer sets to be sorted. In a replicated system, the network is the bottleneck due to the high number of query servers and the continuous data interchange with the brokers. Finally, we demonstrate that a clustered system will outperform a replicated system if a high number of query servers is used, essentially due to the reduction of the network load. However a change in the distribution of the users’ queries could reduce the performance of a clustered system.     

Formation consensus for discrete-time heterogeneous multi-agent systems with link failures and actuator/sensor faults

In this paper, a distributed control protocol is presented for discrete-time heterogeneous multi-agent systems in order to achieve formation consensus against link failures and actuator/sensor faults under fixed and switching topologies. A model equivalent method is proposed to deal with the heterogeneous system consists of arbitrary order systems with different parameters. Based on graph theory and Lyapunov theory, stability conditions to solve formation consensus problem are developed for the underlying heterogeneous systems with communication link failures. In order to tolerate actuator/sensor faults, a distributed adaptive controller is proposed based on fault compensation. The desired control is designed by linear matrix inequality approach together with cone complementarity linearisation algorithm. After applying the new control scheme to heterogeneous systems under the directed topologies with link failures and faults, the resulting closed-loop heterogeneous system is validated to be stable. The effectiveness of the new formation consensus control strategy and its robustness are verified by simulations.     

Two-layer distributed hybrid affine formation control of networked Euler–Lagrange systems

This paper tackles a distributed hybrid affine formation control (HAFC) problem for Euler–Lagrange multi-agent systems with modelling uncertainties using full-state feedback in both time-varying and constant formation cases. First, a novel two-layer framework is adopted to define the HAFC problem. Using the property of the affine transformation, we present the sufficient and necessary conditions of achieving the affine localizability. Because only parts of the leaders and followers can access to the desired formation information and states of the dynamic leaders, respectively, we design a distributed finite-time sliding-mode estimator to acquire the desired position, velocity, and acceleration of each agent. In the sequel, combined with the integral barrier Lyapunov functions, we propose a distributed formation control law for each leader in the first layer and a distributed affine formation control protocol for each follower in the second layer respectively with bounded velocities for all agents, meanwhile the adaptive neural networks are applied to compensate the model uncertainties. The uniform ultimate boundedness of all the tracking errors can be guaranteed by Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, corresponding simulations are carried out to verify the theoretical results and demonstrate that with the proposed control approach the agents can accurately and continuously track the given references.     

Asymptotic stability of general linear dynamical networks under distributed relative-state feedback control

This paper investigates general linear dynamical networks (GLDNs), distributed relative-state feedback control, and pinning control. For symmetric GLDNs under distributed relative-state feedback control, some necessary and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability are proposed. While for the asymmetric case, some sufficient conditions are derived. If the obtained stability conditions are not satisfied, one can design some pinning controllers to asymptotically stabilize the GLDNs. Compared with the existing results, the considered dynamical network model is more general, and the obtained theoretical results are novel.     

Analysis and design for continuous-time string-connected Takagi–Sugeno systems

Distributed systems consist of interconnected, lower-dimensional subsystems. For such systems, distributed analysis and design present several advantages, such as modularity, easier analysis and design, and reduced computational complexity. A special case of distributed systems is when the subsystems are connected in a string. Applications include distributed process control, traffic and communication networks, irrigation systems, hydropower valleys, etc. By exploiting such a structure, in this paper, we propose conditions for the distributed stability analysis of Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy systems connected in a string. These conditions are also extended to observer and controller design and illustrated on numerical examples.     

分布式基站在无线网络设计中的应用探讨

在无线网络设计中,与传统基站不同,分布式基站的BBU＋RRU独特架构使其在特殊场景的网络设计中具有更多的灵活性。文章主要介绍了分布式基站基本概念、技术特点,并对其在实际无线网络设计中的应用进行了分析。     

Distributed MPC-based adaptive control for linear systems with unknown parameters

This paper is concerned with the adaptive control problem for a class of linear discrete-time systems with unknown parameters based on the distributed model predictive control (MPC) method. Instead of using the system state, the state estimate is employed to model the distributed state estimation system. In this way, the system state does not have to be measurable. Furthermore, in order to improve the system performance, both the output error and its estimation are considered. Moreover, a novel Lyapunov functional, comprised of a series of distributed traces of estimation errors and their transposes, has been presented. Then, sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee the exponential ultimate boundedness of the system as well as the asymptotic stability of the error system by solving a nonlinear programming (NP) problem subject to input constraints. Finally, the simulation examples is given to illustrate the effectiveness and the validity of the proposed technique.     

Distributed semistable LQR control for discrete-time dynamically coupled systems

A distributed linear-quadratic-regulator (LQR) semistability theory for discrete-time systems is developed for designing optimal semistable controllers for discrete-time coupled systems. Unlike the standard LQR control problem, a unique feature of the proposed optimal control problem is that the closed-loop generalized discrete-time semistable Lyapunov equation can admit multiple solutions. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions to the generalized discrete-time semistable Lyapunov equation are derived and an optimization-based design framework for distributed optimal controllers is presented.     

Replicating web contents using a hybrid particle swarm optimization

We consider the problem of placing copies of objects in a distributed web server system to minimize the cost of serving read and write requests when the web servers have limited storage capacities. We formulate the problem as a 0–1 optimization problem and present a hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm to solve it. The proposed hybrid algorithm makes use of the strong global search ability of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the strong local search ability of tabu search to obtain high quality solutions. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by comparing it with the genetic algorithm (GA), simple PSO, tabu search, and random placement algorithm on a variety of test cases. The simulation results indicate that the proposed hybrid approach outperforms the GA, simple PSO, and tabu search.