Event-based motion coordination of multiple underwater vehicles under disturbances

The problem of driving a formation from an initial to a target configuration while under the effect of external disturbances is studied. Additional restrictions on agent sensing as well as inter-agent communication must be satisfied. We present a leader-follower solution that relies on a simple uncertainty model to trigger surfacing events. These events are then used to update the control signal, for which two different, provably correct, control strategies are proposed. Finally, we show how the surfacing events can be used to characterize the disturbance set. Numerical examples on relevant scenarios are also provided.

[1]  Anders Stigebrandt,et al.  Statistical models and distributions of current velocities with application to the prediction of extreme events , 2003 .

[2]  Karl Henrik Johansson,et al.  A verified hierarchical control architecture for co-ordinated multi-vehicle operations , 2007 .

[3]  Manfredi Maggiore,et al.  Necessary and sufficient graphical conditions for formation control of unicycles , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[4]  Demin Xu,et al.  Formation control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles in horizontal plane , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Automation and Logistics.

[5]  Petter Ögren,et al.  Cooperative control of mobile sensor networks:Adaptive gradient climbing in a distributed environment , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[6]  Dusan M. Stipanovic,et al.  Formation Control and Collision Avoidance for Multi-agent Non-holonomic Systems: Theory and Experiments , 2008, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  Naomi Ehrich Leonard,et al.  Virtual leaders, artificial potentials and coordinated control of groups , 2001, Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (Cat. No.01CH37228).

[8]  Gerardo Lafferriere,et al.  Decentralized control of vehicle formations , 2005, Syst. Control. Lett..

[9]  Eduardo Aranda-Bricaire,et al.  Non-collision conditions in multi-agent robots formation using local potential functions , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Magnus Egerstedt,et al.  Decentralized Formation Selection Mechanisms Inspired by Foraging Bottlenose Dolphins , 2008 .

[11]  D V Dimarogonas,et al.  Multi-agent coordination with event-based communication , 2010, Proceedings of the 2010 American Control Conference.

[12]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Controlling formations of multiple mobile robots , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[13]  R. Fierro,et al.  On Motion Coordination of Multiple Vehicles with Nonholonomic Constraints , 2007, 2007 American Control Conference.