CPS: Small: Fundamental Limitations for Classes of Cooperative Multi-Agent Systems

本研究的目的是研究一类协作多智能体系统的稳定性、性能和鲁棒性等性质。多智能体系统，如车辆排和耦合振荡器，可以显示出紧急行为，这是很难从单个子系统的行为中预测的。该方法是开发和扩展基本设计限制的理论，以涵盖通过物理和虚拟通信链路进行通信的多代理系统。该理论将进一步描述已知的现象，如弦不稳定性，并将分析扩展到其他系统，如谐振子。该理论将在密歇根嵌入式控制系统实验室进行测试和验证。拟议研究的智力价值将是开发工具，描述控制系统的性能和反馈特性之间的权衡，涉及人和计算机代理的混合以及硬件动力学、控制器和网络拓扑的类别。将评估每个代理对系统行为的贡献？S在硬件上的实现(受牛顿定律的约束)以及软件和通信中的实现(受香农和博德发现的约束)。拟议研究的更广泛影响将对密歇根大学和苏黎世理工大学的教学产生重大影响。在每所学校，受欢迎的教学实验室每年允许来自不同背景的100多名学生学习嵌入式网络分布式控制系统领域的概念。新的触觉设备家族将使研究转移到这些教学实验室。

The objective of this research is to study such properties of classes of cooperative multi-agent systems as stability, performance, and robustness. Multi-agent systems such as vehicle platoons and coupled oscillators can display emergent behavior that is difficult to predict from the behavior of individual subsystems. The approach is to develop and extend the theory of fundamental design limitations to cover multi-agent systems that communicate over both physical and virtual communication links. The theory will further describe known phenomena, such as string instability, and extend the analysis to other systems, such as harmonic oscillators. The theory will be tested and validated in the Michigan Embedded Control Systems Laboratory. The intellectual merit of the proposed research will be the development of tools that delineate tradeoffs between performance and feedback properties for control systems involving mixes of human and computer agents and classes of hardware dynamics, controllers, and network topology. The contribution to system behavior of each agent?s realization in hardware (constrained by Newton's laws) and realization in software and communications (subject to the constraints discovered by Shannon and Bode) will be assessed. The broader impacts of the proposed research will be a significant impact on teaching, both at the University of Michigan and at ETH Zurich. At each school, popular teaching laboratories allow over 100 students per year, from diverse backgrounds, to learn concepts from the field of embedded networked distributed control systems. New families of haptic devices will enable the research to be transferred into these teaching laboratories.