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

智能优势：近年来，小型、灵活、相对廉价的移动自动驾驶汽车和传感器的发展取得了显著进展，最终用于各种用途，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。这些设备的存在以及对更先进版本的预期开发提出了一个令人信服的问题：大量小型自动驾驶汽车/传感器能否成功地以一群或一群的形式部署，作为一个搜索团队、探索团队或类似的东西，合作执行规定的任务，并作为一个团队对高层管理命令做出反应？这样的一个团队能否在一个集中的管理者、成员之间有限的沟通、有限的权力能力和/或成员的角色不完全相同、可能随着时间而变化的情况下可靠地发挥作用？从广义上讲，这些都是激发这项拟议研究的问题。特别地，我们提出了协调大型移动自主代理/移动传感器群体的两个方面的攻击。首先，我们的意图是继续我们在国家科学基金会的支持下已经在做的工作，将图形刚性应用于车辆编队的维护和传感器在大型移动网络中的定位。其次，我们建议继续研究先前研究的原型同步和编队形成问题，如群集和交会，以期发现新的协同控制原理和分析这类系统的新方法。在前一个类别中，我们计划认真研究如何修改刚性概念，使其适用于领导-追随者编队。我们还将仔细研究全局刚性明智的要求，以便确定非刚性网络中单个传感器的位置。我们将解决距离约束传感器网络定位问题的所有方面，以便为中等一般类型的网络设计可证明正确的分布式定位算法。我们将使用简单的高水平点模型探讨同步问题和组模式形成问题。我们在这里的目的不是解决我们将要提出的问题，而是依靠它们来提出关于合作控制的有趣问题，这些问题可能适用于更现实的环境中更现实的模型。我们将研究收敛速度问题。我们将尝试推广和形式化分析同步的概念，目的是创建一种分析大类异步多智能体运动控制问题的方法。我们将特别关注由于车辆移动网络中邻居的变化而产生的切换动力系统的结构。我们想知道的是，是否存在我们可以利用的内在结构属性，就像我们在。得到收敛结果，从而避免了典型切换动力系统的收敛问题所带来的NP困难。更广泛的影响：该项目将促进发现和理解，同时促进至少两个地区的教学、培训和学习。不同的方式。首先，参与该项目的研究生将被要求参加技术会议并展示他们的成果。其次，项目研究生将贡献并参与一个关于该主题的短期课程，我们设想在项目结束时组织和提供该主题。尽管我们肯定会鼓励这样的参与，但我们想不出任何特别不寻常的方式来扩大代表性不足群体的参与。该项目将至少从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同事进行跨学科合作，我们已经与他们合作了好几年。其次，我们希望继续与耶鲁大学和UCSB的实验学家同事合作，他们正在建立一个移动传感器网络测试平台，以尝试各种控制算法。我们希望通过组织和举办良好的跨学科技术会议，如我们于2003年6月共同举办的布洛克岛合作控制研讨会，继续为扩大传播作出贡献，以增进科学和技术的了解。我们还希望就这个主题进行概述性的演讲，比如去年7月我们在比利时MTNS会议上所做的全体会议报告，以及去年11月我们在加州大学圣地亚哥分校工程系所做的Penner讲座。

Intellectual Merit: Remarkable advances have been made in recent years in the development of small,agile, relatively inexpensive mobile autonomous vehicles and sensors, ultimately intended for a wide variety ofpurposes such as search and rescue, exploration, environmental monitoring, distributed sensing, the cleaningand maintaining of structures, etc. The existence of such devices and the anticipated development of still moreadvanced versions raises compelling questions: Can large numbers of small autonomous vehicles/sensors besuccessfully deployed in the form of a swarm or flock as a search team, an exploration group, or somethingsimilar, to cooperatively carry out a prescribed task and to respond as a group to high-level managementcommands? Can such a group reliably function with a centralized supervisor, with limited communicationbetween members, with limited power capabilities and/or with the roles of its members not all the same andperhaps changing with time. In broad terms these are the issues which motivate this proposed research.In particular we propose two pronged assault on the issue of coordinating large groups of mobile autonomousagents/mobile sensors. First, our intention is to continue the work we are already doing with NSFsupport, on the applications of graph rigidity to the maintaining of vehicle formations and to the localizationof sensors in a large, possible mobile network. Second we propose to continue studying prototype synchronizationand formation forming problems such as flocking and rendezvous, which we considered in priorwork, with the objective of uncovering new principles of cooperative control and new means to analyze suchsystems. In the former category, we plan to take a hard look at how one might modify the rigidity conceptso as to make in applicable to leader-follower formations. We will also look carefully at just what is requiredglobal rigidity wise, to enable one to determine the position of a single sensor in a non-rigid network. Wewill address all aspects of the distance constrained sensor network localization problem, in an e.ort to devisea provably correct distributed localization algorithm, for a moderately general class of networks.We will explore synchronization problems and group pattern forming problems using simple high levelpoint models. Our aim here is not so much to solve the problems we will pose as it is to rely on them tosuggest interesting questions about cooperative control, which are potentially applicable to more realisticmodels in more realistic settings. We will look at rate of convergence issues. We will attempt to generalizeand formalize the concept of analytic synchronization with the goal of creating a means of analyzing a largeclass of asynchronous multi-agent motion control problems. We will be particularly interest in the structureof the switched dynamical systems which result due to the changing of neighbors in a mobile network ofvehicles. What we want to know is if there are inherent structural properties we can exploit {as we did in the.ocking problem} to obtain convergence results, so as to avoid the NP hardness associated with convergencequestions with typical switched dynamical systems.Broader Impacts: This project will advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, trainingand learning in at least two di.erent ways. First, graduate students involved in the project will beexpected to attend and present there results at technical meetings. Second, project graduate students willcontribute to and participate in a short course on the topic which we envision organizing and giving towardsthe end of the project. We cannot think of any especially unusual way in which this project might broadenparticipation of under represented groups, although we certainly would encourage such participation. Thisproject will enhance infrastructure for research and education in at least two ways. First we expect tocontinue our cross-disciplinary collaboration with our environmental biologist colleagues with whom we'vealready been working for several years. Second, we expect to continue to collaborate with our experimentalistcolleagues at Yale and UCSB who are building a mobile sensor network test beds for trying out variouscontrol algorithms. We hope to continue to contribute to broadening dissemination to enhance scienti.cand technological understanding by organizing and running boni .de interdisciplinary technical gatheringslike the Block Island Workshop on Cooperative Control we co-organized and which took take place in June,2003. We also expect to give overview talks on the subject such as the plenary presentation we gave lastJuly at the MTNS meeting in Belgium, and the Penner Lecture we gave last November to the engineeringfaculty at UCSD.