Design of Robust Distributed Control Schemes with Applications to Multi-Agent Systems

该方案考虑了用结构约束控制器控制关联大系统的问题。在传感器网络、电力系统、自动车辆协调运动和交通网络等许多物理系统中，相互作用的子系统在地理上是分散的。通常，由于网络的分布式性质以及所需的在线计算的复杂性，这类系统的传统集中控制效率不高。此外，数据从子系统到控制器的连续传输通常是昂贵的，反之亦然。这种结构的另一个明显缺点是，由此产生的闭环系统具有单点故障。另一方面，在分布式控制结构中，可以通过仅集中于对相应子系统具有相对较高影响的那些输出(通过互连)来生成每个子系统的控制输入。这降低了计算的复杂性，同时提高了控制拓扑的效率。 众所周知，不精确的建模、执行器的限制、传感器的限制、测量误差和时滞如果不在控制器设计中考虑，可能会导致互联系统的性能下降甚至不稳定。由于具有上述实际考虑的控制分析和综合的复杂性，它们往往在问题的表述中被忽略。在这项工作中，将使用有效的方法来解决最实际的环境中的问题，并将推导出保证稳健性能的充分条件。特别是，这些实际问题对多智能体系统中的连通性保持、共识、遏制、队形控制和跟踪问题的影响将被调查。这些在控制设计和分析方面的考虑将使本研究的结果更适用于现实世界中的多智能体网络控制系统。

The problem of controlling an interconnected large-scale system by means of structurally constrained controllers is considered in this proposal. In many physical systems such as sensor networks, power systems, coordinated motion of automated vehicles and traffic networks, the interacting subsystems are geographically dispersed. Usually, traditional centralized control for this type of system is not as efficient, due to the distributed nature of the network and also the complexity of the required on-line computations. Furthermore, continuous transmission of data from the subsystems to the controller and vice versa is typically expensive. Another obvious disadvantage of such structure is that the resultant closed-loop system has a single point of failure. In a distributed control structure, on the other hand, one can generate the control input of each subsystem by only concentrating on those outputs which have a relatively high impact on the corresponding subsystem (through interconnections). This reduces the complexity of the computations, and at the same time improves the efficiency of the control topology. It is known that inexact modeling, actuator limitations, sensor constraints, measurement error and time delay, if not taken into account in the controller design, can lead to performance degradation or even instability of the interconnected system. Due to the complexity of the control analysis and synthesis with the above-mentioned practical considerations, they are often neglected in the problem formulation. In this work, effective approaches will be used to tackle the problem in the most practical setting, and sufficient conditions will be derived to guarantee robust performance. In particular, the effects of these practical issues on connectivity preservation, consensus, containment, formation control and tracking problems in a multi-agent system will be investigated. Such considerations in control design and analysis will make the results of this research more applicable to real-world multi-agent networked control systems.