Coordinated control and estimation for multi-agent systems: Theory and practice

Coordinated Control and Estimation for Multi-agent Systems: Theory and Practice Daniel J. Klein Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Kristi A. Morgansen Aeronautics & Astronautics The problems studied in this thesis center on coordinated control and estimation tasks for multi-agent systems. The work begins technically, with a Kuramoto-inspired study of coordinated phasor centroid control for a group ofN homogeneous phase integrators. A main result is the development of a controller which guarantees asymptotic stability of the phasor centroid to a known reference vector. An extensions of the splay state to non-balanced group states is then explored. The work then moves on to a group of N heterogeneous agents wherein some agents act as leaders to the others, which obey a standard sinusoidal protocol. One interesting point here is that unlike in the related controlled linear agreement problem, symmetry of the communication topology does not determine uncontrollability. While these results are derived in continuous time, the next contributions shows that many of the desirable coordination properties can be preserved in discrete time. The work then moves to a more applied focus. A simulation study of coordinated target tracking is conducted, considering questions of control, estimation, and communication for distributed systems. Finally, the design and development of a computer vision system which enables a demonstration of some of the theory-oriented work on the University of Washington’s Underwater Fin-actuated Autonomous Vehicle testbed is discussed.