The thesis presents new results on multi-agent formation control, focusing on the distributed stabilization control of rigid formation shapes. It analyzes a range of current research problems such as problems concerning the equilibrium and stability of formation control systems, or the problem of cooperative coordination control when agents have general dynamical models, and discusses practical considerations arising during the implementation of established formation control algorithms. In addition, the thesis presents models of increasing complexity, from single integrator models, to double integrator models, to agents modeled by nonlinear kinematic and dynamic equations, including the familiar unicycle model and nonlinear system equations with drift terms. Presenting the fruits of a close collaboration between several top control groups at leading universities including Yale University, Groningen University, Purdue University and Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), the thesis spans various research areas, including robustness issues in formations, quantization-based coordination, exponential stability in formation systems, and cooperative coordination of networked heterogeneous systems.

This monograph introduces recent developments in formation control of distributed-agent systems. Eschewing the traditional concern with the dynamic characteristics of individual agents, the book proposes a treatment that studies the formation control problem in terms of interactions among agents including factors such as sensing topology, communication and actuation topologies, and computations. Keeping pace with recent technological advancements in control, communications, sensing and computation that have begun to bring the applications of distributed-systems theory out of the industrial sphere and into that of day-to-day life, this monograph provides distributed control algorithms for a group of agents that may behave together. Unlike traditional control laws that usually require measurements with respect to a global coordinate frame and communications between a centralized operation center and agents, this book provides control laws that require only relative measurements and communications between agents without interaction with a centralized operator. Since the control algorithms presented in this book do not require any global sensing and any information exchanges with a centralized operation center, they can be realized in a fully distributed way, which significantly reduces the operation and implementation costs of a group of agents. Formation Control will give both students and researchers interested in pursuing this field a good grounding on which to base their work.

Multiagent systems (MAS) are one of the most exciting and the fastest growing domains in the intelligent resource management and agent-oriented technology, which deals with modeling of autonomous decisions making entities. Recent developments have produced very encouraging results in the novel approach of handling multiplayer interactive systems. In particular, the multiagent system approach is adapted to model, control, manage or test the operations and management of several system applications including multi-vehicles, microgrids, multi-robots, where agents represent individual entities in the network. Each participant is modeled as an autonomous participant with independent strategies and responses to outcomes. They are able to operate autonomously and interact pro-actively with their environment. In recent works, the problem of information consensus is addressed, where a team of vehicles communicate with each other to agree on key pieces of information that enable them to work together in a coordinated fashion. The problem is challenging because communication channels have limited range and there are possibilities of fading and dropout. The book comprises chapters on synchronization and consensus in multiagent systems. It shows that the joint presentation of synchronization and consensus enables readers to learn about similarities and differences of both concepts. It reviews the cooperative control of multi-agent dynamical systems interconnected by a communication network topology. Using the terminology of cooperative control, each system is endowed with its own state variable and dynamics. A fundamental problem in multi-agent dynamical systems on networks is the design of distributed protocols that guarantee consensus or synchronization in the sense that the states of all the systems reach the same value. It is evident from the results that research in multiagent systems offer opportunities for further developments in theoretical, simulation and implementations. This book attempts to fill this gap and aims at presenting a comprehensive volume that documents theoretical aspects and practical applications.

Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems extends optimal control and adaptive control design methods to multi-agent systems on communication graphs. It develops Riccati design techniques for general linear dynamics for cooperative state feedback design, cooperative observer design, and cooperative dynamic output feedback design. Both continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical multi-agent systems are treated. Optimal cooperative control is introduced and neural adaptive design techniques for multi-agent nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics, which are rarely treated in literature are developed. Results spanning systems with first-, second- and on up to general high-order nonlinear dynamics are presented. Each control methodology proposed is developed by rigorous proofs. All algorithms are justified by simulation examples. The text is self-contained and will serve as an excellent comprehensive source of information for researchers and graduate students working with multi-agent systems.

Cooperative Control Design: A Systematic, Passivity-Based Approach discusses multi-agent coordination problems, including formation control, attitude coordination, and synchronization. The goal of the book is to introduce passivity as a design tool for multi-agent systems, to provide exemplary work using this tool, and to illustrate its advantages in designing robust cooperative control algorithms. The discussion begins with an introduction to passivity and demonstrates how passivity can be used as a design tool for motion coordination. Followed by the case of adaptive redesigns for reference velocity recovery while describing a basic design, a modified design and the parameter convergence problem. Formation control is presented as it relates to relative distance control and relative position control. The coverage is concluded with a comprehensive discussion of agreement and the synchronization problem with an example using attitude coordination.

Are there universal principles of coordinated group motion and if so what might they be? This carefully edited book presents how natural groupings such as fish schools, bird flocks, deer herds etc. coordinate themselves and move so flawlessly, often without an apparent leader or any form of centralized control. It shows how the underlying principles of cooperative control may be used for groups of mobile autonomous agents to help enable a large group of autonomous robotic vehicles in the air, on land or sea or underwater, to collectively accomplish useful tasks such as distributed, adaptive scientific data gathering, search and rescue, or reconnaissance.

This book includes a selection of research work in the mobile robotics area, where several interesting topics are presented. In this way we find a review of multi-agents, different techniques applied to the navigation systems, artificial intelligence algorithms, which include deep learning applications, systems where a Kalman filter estimator is extended for visual odometry, and finally the design of an on-chip system for the execution of cognitive agents. Additionally, the development of different ideas in mobile robot applications are included and hopefully will be useful and enriching for readers.