High-Level Local Control Strategies for the Coordination of Large Groups of Mobile Autonomous Agents

用于协调大型移动自治代理组的高级本地控制策略

• 批准号: 0322967
• 负责人: A. Morse
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-09-01 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0322967&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Level; Local; Control; Strategies; Coordination

Intellectual Merit: Remarkable advances have been made in recent years in the developmentof small, agile, relatively inexpensive mobile autonomous vehicles, ultimately intended for a widevariety of purposes such as search and rescue, exploration, environmental monitoring, distributedsensing, the cleaning and maintaining of structures, etc. The existence of such vehicles and theanticipated development of still more advanced versions raises compelling questions: Can largenumbers of small autonomous vehicles be successfully deployed in the form of a "swarm" or "flock"as a search team, an exploration group, or something similar, to cooperatively carry out a pre-scribedtask and to respond as a group to high-level management commands? Can such a groupreliably function robustly, in a difficult or even uninhabitable environment such as outer space orunder sea, possibly without a designated leader, with limited communications between its mem-bers,and/or with the "roles"of its members not all the same and perhaps changing with time?What can we learn about how to organize these groupings from biological groupings such as insectswarms, bird ocks, and fish schools? Is there a hierarchy of "compatible" models appropriate toswarming/schooling/ ocking which is rich enough to explain these behaviors at various "resolutions"ranging from aggregate characterizations of emergent behavior, to "point models" for eachvehicle, to even more detailed descriptions which model individual vehicle dynamics? In broadterms, these are the issues we propose to addressMore specifically, we propose to study distributed multi-vehicle motion control algorithms withthe aim of better understanding the concepts upon which large classes of such algorithms mightdepend. For example, we would like to better understand the implications of changing nearestneighbor sets and how this intrinsic property can be modelled and analyzed within the contextof switched dynamical systems. We would also like to understand how to analyze asynchronoussystems, which because of coarse modelling, exhibit non-deterministic state transitions. We alsopropose to explore, devise and evaluate alternative data structures/models at various degrees ofgranularity for representing large homogeneous/hetrogeneous groups of mobile autonomous agentsmoving in a densely populated environment. These representations are needed for a variety ofpurposes: for overall management of a large group, for simulating the effects of various protocolson group behavior, etc. Example data structures could include "rigid point formations" and"Euclidean Distance Matrices" as well as other graph-theoretic concepts and vehicle models andvarious levels of abstraction.Broader Impacts: This project will advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching,training and learning in at least two different ways. First, graduate students involved inthe project will be expected to attend and present there results at technical meetings. Second,project graduate students will contribute to and participate in a short course on the topic whichwe envision organizing and giving towards the end of the project. We cannot think of any especiallyunusual way in which this project might broaden participation of underrepresented groups,although we certainly would encourage such participation. This project will enhance infrastructurefor research and education in at least two ways. First we expect to continue our crossdisciplinarycollaboration with our environmental biologist colleagues with whom we've already been workingfor several years. Second, we expect to continue to collaborate with our experimentalist colleagueswho have built an underwater multi-vehicle testbed { originally conceived by this PI } for tryingout various control algorithms. We hope to continue to contribute to broadening dissemination toenhance scientific and technological understanding by organizing and running boni fide interdisciplinarytechnical gatherings like the forthcoming Block Island Workshop on Cooperative Controlwhich we've co-organized and which will take place in June, 2003.

智力优势：近年来，在小型、灵活、相对便宜的移动的自动驾驶车辆的开发方面取得了显着的进展，最终用于各种各样的目的，如搜索和救援、勘探、环境监测、分布式传感、结构的清洁和维护等。这种车辆的存在和更先进版本的预期开发提出了引人注目的问题：大量的小型自动驾驶汽车是否可以成功地以“蜂群”或“羊群”的形式部署，作为搜索团队，探索团队或类似的东西，以合作执行预定的任务，并作为一个群体响应高层管理命令？这样一个团体是否能够在困难甚至无法居住的环境中，如外层空间或海底，可能没有指定的领导人，成员之间的沟通有限，和/或其成员的“角色“不完全相同，也许随着时间的推移而变化，稳健地运作？关于如何从虫群、鸟群和鱼群等生物分组中组织这些分组，我们可以学到什么？是否有一个层次结构的“兼容”模型适当toswarming/schooling/ ocking是丰富的，足以解释这些行为在各种“决议“，从聚集的表征紧急行为，“点模型”为eachvehicle，甚至更详细的描述模型个别车辆的动力学？从广义上讲，这些问题，我们建议解决更具体地说，我们建议研究分布式多车辆的运动控制算法，目的是更好地理解的概念后，大类这样的算法可能依赖。例如，我们想更好地理解改变nearestneighbor集的含义，以及如何在切换动力系统的上下文中建模和分析这种内在属性。我们还想了解如何分析由于粗糙建模而表现出非确定性状态转换的复杂系统。我们也提出了探索，设计和评估替代数据结构/模型在不同程度的粒度代表大型同质/异构组的移动的自主agentsmoving在人口稠密的环境。这些表示方法有多种用途：用于大型团体的整体管理，用于模拟各种协议对团体行为的影响等。示例数据结构可以包括“刚性点形成”和“欧几里得距离矩阵”以及其他图论概念和车辆模型以及各种抽象级别。该项目将促进发现和理解，同时以至少两种不同的方式促进教学，培训和学习。首先，参与该项目的研究生将被要求参加技术会议并在会上展示其成果。第二，项目研究生将参与一个关于我们设想的主题的短期课程，并在项目结束时组织和提供。我们想不出任何特别不寻常的方式，使这个项目可以扩大代表性不足的群体的参与，尽管我们肯定会鼓励这种参与。该项目将至少在两个方面加强研究和教育的基础设施。首先，我们希望继续我们的跨学科合作与我们的环境生物学家同事，我们已经与他们合作了几年。第二，我们希望继续与我们的实验同事合作，他们已经建立了一个水下多车辆试验台（最初由本PI构思），用于尝试各种控制算法。我们希望通过组织和举办真正的跨学科技术会议，如即将举行的布洛克岛合作控制研讨会，继续为扩大传播以提高科学和技术的理解做出贡献。布洛克岛合作控制研讨会将于2003年6月举行，我们已经共同组织了这次研讨会。