Multi-vehicle consensus with a time-varying reference state. (English) Zbl 1157.90459

Ren, Wei

Syst. Control Lett. 56, No. 7-8, 474-483 (2007).

Summary: We study the consensus problem in multi-vehicle systems, where the information states of all vehicles approach a time-varying reference state under the condition that only a portion of the vehicles (e.g., the unique team leader) have access to the reference state and the portion of the vehicles might not have a directed path to all of the other vehicles in the team. We first analyze a consensus algorithm with a constant reference state using graph theoretical tools. We then propose consensus algorithms with a time-varying reference state and show necessary and sufficient conditions under which consensus is reached on the time-varying reference state. The time-varying reference state can be an exogenous signal or evolve according to a nonlinear model. These consensus algorithms are also extended to achieve relative state deviations among the vehicles. An application example to multi-vehicle formation control is given as a proof of concept.

MSC:

90B50	Management decision making, including multiple objectives
93C85	Automated systems (robots, etc.) in control theory

Keywords:

consensus seeking; cooperative control; multi-vehicle systems; coordination

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