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

智能优点：近年来，小型、灵活、相对廉价的移动自动驾驶车辆的开发取得了显著进展，最终目的是广泛的用途，如搜救、勘探、环境监测、分布式传感、建筑物的清洁和维护等。此类车辆的存在以及预期更先进版本的预期发展提出了引人注目的问题：能否成功地将大量小型自动驾驶车辆以“蜂群”或“集群”的形式部署为搜索队、探险队或类似机构，以合作执行预先编写的任务，并作为一个小组对高级管理命令做出反应？在困难甚至不适合居住的环境中，如外层空间或海底，这样的群体是否能稳健地运作，可能没有指定的领导人，成员之间的沟通有限，和/或成员的“角色”并不完全相同，可能会随着时间的推移而变化？我们可以从昆虫群、鸟群和鱼群等生物群体中了解到如何组织这些群体？是否有一个适用于变暖/就学/储存的“兼容”模型的层次结构，足以在各种“分辨率”下解释这些行为，从对紧急行为的综合描述，到每辆车的“点模型”，再到对单个车辆动力学进行更详细的描述？更具体地说，我们建议研究分布式多车辆运动控制算法，目的是更好地理解大类此类算法可能依赖的概念。例如，我们希望更好地理解改变最近邻集合的含义，以及如何在切换动态系统的背景下对这种内在性质进行建模和分析。我们还想了解如何分析异步系统，这些系统由于建模粗略，呈现出不确定的状态转换。我们还建议探索、设计和评估不同粒度的替代数据结构/模型，以表示在人口稠密的环境中移动的大型同质/非同质自主智能体群体。这些表示可用于多种目的：用于大群体的整体管理，用于模拟各种协议对群体行为的影响等。示例数据结构可包括“刚性点阵形”和“欧几里德距离矩阵”以及其他图论概念和车辆模型以及不同级别的抽象。广泛的影响：该项目将促进发现和理解，同时至少以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并在技术会议上展示成果。其次，项目研究生将参与并参与一个关于这个主题的短期课程，我们设想在项目结束时组织和给予这个主题。我们想不出这个项目有什么特别不寻常的方式可以扩大代表性不足群体的参与，尽管我们肯定会鼓励这种参与。该项目将从至少两个方面加强研究和教育的基础设施。首先，我们希望继续与我们的环境生物学家同事进行跨学科合作，我们已经与他们合作了几年。其次，我们希望继续与我们的实验同事合作，他们已经建造了一个水下多航行器试验台{最初是由这个PI构思的}，用于试验各种控制算法。我们希望通过组织和举办真正的跨学科技术聚会，如我们共同组织并将于2003年6月举行的关于合作控制的区块岛讲习班，继续为扩大传播作出贡献，以增进对科学技术的了解。

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.