Adaptive distributed convex optimization for multi-agent and its application in flocking behavior

This paper studies adaptive optimization problem of continuous-time multi-agent systems. Multi-agents with second-order dynamics are considered. Each agent is equipped with a time-varying cost function which is known only to an individual agent. The objective is to make multi-agents velocities minimize the sum of local functions by local interaction. First, a distributed adaptive algorithm is presented, in which each agent depends only on its own velocity and neighbors velocities. It is indicated that all agents can track the optimal velocity. Then we apply the distributed adaptive algorithm to flocking of multi-agents. It is proved that all agents can track the optimal trajectory. The agents will maintain connectivity and avoid the inter-agent collision. Finally, two simulations are included to illustrate the results.     

Formation control and collision avoidance for a class of multi-agent systems

In this paper, a control scheme is proposed for a group of elliptical agents to achieve a predefined formation. The agents are assumed to have the same dynamics, and communication among the agents are limited. The desired formation is realized based on the reference formation and the mapping decision. In the control design, searching algorithms for both cases of minimum distance and tangents are established for each agent and its neighbors. In order to avoid collision, an optimal path planning algorithm based on collision angles, and a self-center-based rotation algorithm are also proposed. Moreover, randomized method is used to provide the optimal mapping decision for the underlying system. Two examples and analyses are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of the new control scheme.     

Time-varying output formation tracking of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems with multiple leaders and switching topologies

This paper studies the time-varying output formation tracking problems for heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems with multiple leaders in the presence of switching directed topologies, where the agents can have different system dynamics and state dimensions. The outputs of followers are required to accomplish a given time-varying formation configuration and track the convex combination of leaders’ outputs simultaneously. Firstly, using the neighboring relative information, a distributed observer is constructed for each follower to estimate the convex combination of multiple leaders’ states under the influences of switching directed topologies. The convergence of the observer is proved based on the piecewise Lyapunov theory and the threshold for the average dwell time of the switching topologies is derived. Then, an output formation tracking protocol based on the distributed observer and an algorithm to determine the control parameters of the protocol are presented. Considering the features of heterogeneous dynamics, the time-varying formation tracking feasible constraints are provided, and a compensation input is applied to expand the feasible formation set. Sufficient conditions for the heterogeneous multi-agent systems with multiple leaders and switching directed topologies to achieve the desired time-varying output formation tracking under the designed protocol are proposed. Finally, simulation examples are given to validate the theoretical results.     

Cooperative localization and circumnavigation of multiple targets with bearing-only measurements

This paper studies the multi-target localization and circumnavigation problem for a networked multi-agent system using bearing-only measurements. A more general case that only some of the agents are responsible for measuring the bearing angles with respect to the targets is considered. First, a novel estimator is developed for the agents to locate the targets collaboratively, based on which the geometric center of multi-target is reconstructed by each agent. Then, an estimator-based distributed controller is proposed to steer the agents, such that they can enclose the targets along different circles centered at the geometric center of multi-target with any desired angular spacing. By using Lyapunov stability theory, graph theory and consensus algorithm, global exponential stability of the overall system is analyzed rigorously. Besides, it is proved that bounded angular velocity of each agent and collision avoidance between the target and agent can be guaranteed in the whole movement process. Finally, numerical simulations are given to corroborate the theoretical results.     

Robust actuator fault diagnosis scheme for satellite attitude control systems

In this paper, a robust actuator fault diagnosis scheme is investigated for satellite attitude control systems subject to model uncertainties, space disturbance torques and gyro drifts. A nonlinear unknown input observer is designed to detect the occurrence of any actuator fault. Subsequently, a bank of adaptive unknown input observers activated by the detection results are designed to isolate which actuator is faulty and then estimate of the fault parameter. Fault isolation is achieved based on the well known generalized observer strategy. The simulation on a closed-loop satellite control system with time-varying or constant actuator faults in the form of additive and multiplicative unknown dynamics demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed robust fault diagnosis strategy.     

Adaptive-observer-based formation tracking of networked uncertain underactuated surface vessels with connectivity preservation and collision avoidance

This paper investigates an adaptive output-feedback formation tracking problem for ensuring connectivity preservation and collision avoidance among networked uncertain underactuated surface vessels (USVs) with different communication ranges. An adaptive observer using neural networks is designed to estimate the velocity information of USVs where neural networks estimate unknown nonlinearities of USVs. Especially, contrary to the existing related work of USVs, a new state transformation technique for the adaptive observer design is presented to relax the condition requiring the boundedness of the yaw velocity of USVs. Then, the recursive tracker design strategy is established by using a unified error function for connectivity-preserving and collision-avoiding formation tracking, without employing any potential functions. The proposed formation tracker does not require additional neural networks to estimate unknown nonlinearities derived from the tracker design procedure. The proposed theoretical result is proved in the sense of Lyapunov.     

Distributed observer-based cooperative guidance with appointed impact time and collision avoidance

The problem of cooperative guidance is considered with appointed impact time and collision avoidance for the leader-following flight vehicles, which consist of one leader with the target seeker and the other seeker-less followers. A fixed-time convergent guidance law is presented for the leader to achieve appointed impact time. To guarantee the simultaneous arrival of all the flight vehicles, a cooperative guidance law is proposed to make the follower-leader ranges keep proportional consensus with the range-to-go of leader. A distributed observer is put forward for the followers to estimate the range-to-go of leader. Moreover, the collision avoidance can be reliably fulfilled by the collaborative action of the direction-based and distance-based means.     

Distributed RISE control for spacecraft formation reconfiguration with collision avoidance

In this paper, we investigate the distributed formation reconfiguration problem of multiple spacecraft with collision avoidance in the presence of external disturbances. Artificial potential function (APF) based virtual velocity controllers for the spacecraft are firstly constructed, which overcome the local minima problem through introducing auxiliary inputs weighted by bump functions. Then, based on the robust integral of the sign of the error (RISE) control methodology, a distributed continuous asymptotic tracking control protocol is proposed, accomplishing both formation reconfiguration and the collision avoidance among spacecraft and with obstacles. Furthermore, using tools from graph theory, Lyapunov analysis and backstepping technique, we show the stability and collision avoidance performance of the closed-loop multiple spacecraft system. Numerical simulations for a spacecraft formation are finally provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Distributed consensus tracking control based on state and disturbance observations for mixed-order multi-agent mechanical systems

In this paper, we study the cooperative consensus control problem of mixed-order (also called hybrid-order) multi-agent mechanical systems (MMSs) under the condition of unmeasurable state, unknown disturbance and constrained control input. Here, the controlled mixed-order MMSs are consisted of the mechanical agents having heterogeneous nonlinear dynamics and even non-identical orders, which means that the agents can be of different types and their states to be synchronized can be not exactly the same. In order to achieve the ultimate synchronization of all mixed-order followers, we present a novel distributed adaptive tracking control protocol based on the state and disturbance observations. Wherein, a distributed state observer is used to estimate the followers’ and their neighbors’ unmeasurable states. And, a novel estimated-state-based disturbance observer (DOB) is proposed to reduce the effect of unknown lumped disturbance for the mixed-order MMSs. The proposed control protocol and observers are fully distributed and can be calculated for each follower locally. Lyapunov theory is used for proving the stability of the proposed control algorithm and the convergence of the cooperative tracking errors. A practical cooperative longitudinal landing control example of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented control protocol.     

Optimal formation control and collision avoidance in environment with multiple rectangle obstacles

This paper addresses formation control problem with collision avoidance for general linear multi-agent systems via an optimal control strategy. In the proposed optimal control strategy, a novel potential function is designed to accomplish formation of multi-agent systems (MASs) with obstacle/collision avoidance capability, which can avoid rectangle obstacles accurately. In this potential function, a novel relative velocity based self-adaptive detection region is proposed to avoid collisions with adjacent agents. Moreover, a non-quadratic avoidance performance index is constructed based on inverse optimal control approach. Then, the optimal control strategy is designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system and optimality of the proposed performance index. Finally, a simulation example is given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.     

Observer based sliding mode controller for vehicles with roll dynamics

In this work, considering the roll dynamics and actuator dynamics, an observer-based control scheme for a vehicle is proposed. The proposal considers a nonlinear higher order sliding mode observer to estimate unmeasurable lateral velocity, roll angle and roll velocity. Using the observer information, a controller based on block control with sliding mode technique is designed for the reference trajectory tracking of the lateral and yaw velocities of the vehicle. The stability of the complete closed-loop system including zero dynamics is analyzed. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated through CarSim simulations.     

Distributed fuzzy learning sliding mode cooperative control for non-affine nonlinear multi-missile guidance systems via a prescribed performance observer

This paper focuses on the distributed fuzzy learning sliding mode cooperative control issue for non-affine nonlinear multi-missile guidance systems. The dynamics of each follower is non-affine form with unknown lumped factor. To estimate the unknown lumped factor, a generalized fuzzy hyperbolic model (GFHM) based prescribed performance observer (PPO) is proposed. Different from the traditional disturbance observers, a residual set of error transient behavior is incorporated additionally so that the peak phenomenon can be avoided. Meanwhile, an auxiliary system is employed to convert the system of each follower to augmented affine form. Then, a distributed fuzzy learning sliding mode cooperative control approach is designed which consists of two parts. The adaptive sliding mode control (SMC) part is designed to force the states to move along the predefined integral sliding surface. For the equivalent sliding dynamics, the distributed optimal control part with GFHM is developed to minimize the cooperative performance function. Thus, the stability and the optimality of the closed-loop system are guaranteed synchronously. Finally, all signals of closed-loop system are rigorously proved bounded and the multi-missile cooperative guidance scenario is applied to verify the effectiveness of proposed method.     

A novel general type-2 fuzzy controller for fractional-order multi-agent systems under unknown time-varying topology

In this paper, a robust adaptive control scheme is proposed for the leader following control of a class of fractional-order multi-agent systems (FMAS). The asymptotic stability is shown by a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. The nonlinear dynamics of the agents are assumed to be unknown. Moreover, the communication topology among the agents is assumed to be unknown and time-varying. A deep general type-2 fuzzy system (DGT2FS) using restricted Boltzmann machine (RMB) and contrastive divergence (CD) learning algorithm is proposed to estimate uncertainties. The simulation studies presented indicate that the proposed control method results in good performance under time-varying topology, unknown dynamics and external disturbances. The effectiveness of the proposed DGT2FS is verified also on modeling problems with high dimensional real-world data sets.     

Prescribed-time containment control of high-order nonlinear multi-agent systems based on distributed observer

This paper investigates the prescribed-time containment control problem for multi-agent systems with high-order nonlinear dynamics under a directed communication topology. Firstly, in view of the fact that only some follower agents can directly access the state information of multiple leader agents, a prescribed-time distributed observer is put forward to estimate the convex hull spanned by these leaders. Then, with the help of the distributed observer, a novel containment control method is developed for each follower based on a time-varying scaling function, so that all followers can converge to the convex hull spanned by the states of multiple leaders within a prescribed time. The comparison with the finite-time and fixed-time control methods differs in that the convergence time of the method proposed in this paper is independent of the initial conditions and control parameters and can be arbitrarily preassigned according to actual needs. Finally, an example is given to demonstrate the usefulness of the prescribed-time containment control method.     

Time-varying formation tracking for high-order multi-agent systems with switching topologies and a leader of bounded unknown input

Time-varying formation tracking problems for high-order multi-agent systems with switching topologies are investigated. Different from the previous work, the states of the followers form a predefined time-varying formation while tracking the state of the leader with bounded unknown control input. Besides, the communication topology can be switching, and the dynamics of each agent can have nonlinearities. Firstly, a nonlinear time-varying formation tracking control protocol is presented which is constructed using only local neighboring information. Secondly, an algorithm with four steps is proposed to design the time-varying formation tracking protocol, where the time-varying formation tracking feasibility condition is introduced. Thirdly, by using the Lyapunov theory, the stability of the proposed algorithm is proven. It is proved that the high-order multi-agent system with switching topologies achieves the time-varying formation tracking if the feasibility condition holds and the dwell time is larger than a positive constant. Finally, a numerical example with six followers and one leader is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.     

On consensus control of nonlinear multiagent systems satisfying incremental quadratic constraints

In this paper, we investigate the problem of leaderless consensus control for the multiagent systems whose nonlinear dynamics satisfying incremental quadratic constraints. A distributed dynamic consensus protocol, decided by communication among neighboring agents, is presented to render nonlinear agent consensus with appropriate coupling weights. Next, an observer-based distributed protocol is considered to ensure consensus of nonlinear system without knowing full state information. Further, extensions to consensus strategies with nonlinear dynamics for the leader-following fashion are also addressed. By comparison to the traditional nonlinear consensus control methodologies, the proposed approach generalizes the Lipschitz nonlinearity as well as the combined nonlinearity of one-sided Lipschitz condition and quadratic inner-boundness condition towards a more generalized type of nonlinearity, which shows us a less conservative result in the Lyapunov proof. Finally, the numerical simulations for six agents are illustrated to show the feasibility and performance of the proposed control protocol with or without the presence of the observer.     

Interventional bipartite consensus on coopetition networks with unknown dynamics

In this paper, an interventional bipartite consensus problem is considered for a high-order multi-agent system with unknown disturbance dynamics. The interactions among the agents are cooperative and competitive simultaneously and thus the interaction network (just called coopetition network in sequel for simplicity) is conveniently modeled by a signed graph. When the coopetition network is structurally balanced, all the agents are split into two competitive subgroups. An exogenous system (called leader for simplicity) is introduced to intervene the two competitive subgroups such that they can reach a bipartite consensus. The unknown disturbance dynamics are assumed to have linear parametric models. With the help of the notation of a disagreement state variable, decentralized adaptive laws are proposed to estimate the unknown disturbances and a dynamic output-feedback consensus control is designed for each agent in a fully distributed fashion, respectively. The controller design guarantees that the state matrix of the closed-loop system can be an arbitrary predefined Hurwitz matrix. Under the assumption that the coopetition network is structurally balanced and the leader is a root of the spanning tree in an augmented graph, the bipartite consensus and the parameter estimation are analyzed by invoking a common Lyapunov function method when the coopetition network is time-varying according to a piecewise constant switching signal. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.     

Algorithms for chattering reduction in system control

Sliding mode control (SMC) is among the popular approaches for control of systems, especially for unknown nonlinear systems. However, the chattering in SMC is generally a problem that needs to be resolved for better control. A time-varying method is proposed for determining the sliding gain function in the SMC. Two alternative tuning algorithms are proposed for reducing the sliding gain function for systems. The first algorithm is for systems with no noise and disturbance but with or without unmodeled dynamics. The second algorithm is for systems with noise, disturbance, unmodeled dynamics, or any combination of them. Compared with the state-dependent, equivalent-control-dependent, and hysteresis loop methods, the proposed algorithms are more straightforward and easy to implement. The performance of the algorithms is evaluated for five different cases. A 90% to 95% reduction of chattering is achieved for the first algorithm used for systems with sensor dynamics only. By using the second algorithm, the chattering is reduced by 70% to 90% for systems with noise and/or disturbance, and by 25% to 50% for systems with a combination of disturbance, noise, and unmodeled dynamics.     

Type-2 fuzzy consensus control of nonlinear multi-agent systems: An LMI approach

This paper considers a class of nonlinear fractional-order multi-agent systems (FOMASs) with time-varying delay and unknown dynamics, and a new robust adaptive control technique is proposed for cooperative control. The unknown nonlinearities of the systems are online approximated by the introduced recurrent general type-2 fuzzy neural network (RGT2FNN). The unknown nonlinear functions are estimated, simultaneously with the control process. In other words, at each sample time the parameters of the proposed RGT2FNNs are updated and then the control signals are generated. In addition to the unknown dynamics, the orders of the fractional systems are also supposed to be unknown. The biogeography-based optimization algorithm (BBO) is extended to estimate the unknown parameters of RGT2FNN and fractional-orders. A LMI based compensator is introduced to guarantee the robustness of the proposed control system. The excellent performance and effectiveness of the suggested method is verified by several simulation examples and it is compared with the other methods. It is confirmed that the introduced cooperative controller results in a desirable performance in the presence of time-varying delay, unknown dynamics, and unknown fractional-orders.     

Motion information based avoidance control for 3-D multi-agent systems

This paper presents a closed-form cooperative avoidance control design for 3-dimensional rigid-body agents. New avoidance functions are designed to integrate the collision risk with the addition of motion and posture information. Time-varying sensing regions enable the conflict resolution actions only when there is a potential risk of collision, thus further reducing some unnecessary interference with other objectives. These characteristics lead to the less-conservative avoidance response, smoother maneuvers, and milder motion trajectories. The stability of the proposed method is analyzed and the corresponding proofs and guaranties for collision-free maneuvering, are provided. Performance comparisons are presented for two simulation scenarios, which illustrate the effectiveness and reliability of the new method.