Formation Tracking Control For Heterogeneous Swarm Systems

Swarm system, also known as multi-agent system, refers to a system composed of multiple subsystems (agents) with certain communication, calculation, decision-making, and action capabilities through local information interaction, such as a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), satellites, etc. Formation tracking control of swarm systems is an important technical support and approach for the emergence of swarm intelligence at motion control level. By applying formation tracking control, swarm system agents can adjust their relations in the state or output space through neighboring information interaction, and then the swarm system can achieve favorable space-time conditions for many cooperative tasks such as source seeking, target enclosing, and surveillance. Thus, complex missions can be performed efficiently or cost-effectively. In cross-domain collaborative applications, including air-ground coordination and air-sea coordination, swarm systems are usually composed of several heterogeneous agents, and swarm intelligence can be enhanced by complementary functions of different agents. How to achieve time-varying formation tracking for heterogeneous swarm systems is crucial for cross-domain coordination, which has important theoretical value and practical significance. This important book presents a systematic theoretical approach and control framework on the time-varying formation tracking for high-order heterogeneous swarm systems. Distributed controller design and stability analysis of closed-loop systems for several specific formation tracking problems are provided. Furthermore, the proposed control approaches are applied to practical cooperative experiment platforms composed of UAVs and UGVs, and several formation tracking experiments are carried out to further verify the effectiveness of the theories.

Swarm system, also known as multi-agent system, refers to a system composed of multiple subsystems (agents) with certain communication, calculation, decision-making, and action capabilities through local information interaction, such as a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), satellites, etc. Formation tracking control of swarm systems is an important technical support and approach for the emergence of swarm intelligence at motion control level. By applying formation tracking control, swarm system agents can adjust their relations in the state or output space through neighboring information interaction, and then the swarm system can achieve favorable space-time conditions for many cooperative tasks such as source seeking, target enclosing, and surveillance. Thus, complex missions can be performed efficiently or cost-effectively. In cross-domain collaborative applications, including air-ground coordination and air-sea coordination, swarm systems are usually composed of several heterogeneous agents, and swarm intelligence can be enhanced by complementary functions of different agents. How to achieve time-varying formation tracking for heterogeneous swarm systems is crucial for cross-domain coordination, which has important theoretical value and practical significance. This important book presents a systematic theoretical approach and control framework on the time-varying formation tracking for high-order heterogeneous swarm systems. Distributed controller design and stability analysis of closed-loop systems for several specific formation tracking problems are provided. Furthermore, the proposed control approaches are applied to practical cooperative experiment platforms composed of UAVs and UGVs, and several formation tracking experiments are carried out to further verify the effectiveness of the theories.

The book focuses on time-varying formation control approaches for practical nonlinear swarm systems. Time-varying formation control is the basic guarantee for performing other tasks of swarm systems, such as cooperative decision-making and cooperative detection. However, most practical swarm systems have nonlinear dynamic models. This book studies three typical models of practical nonlinear swarm systems, which represent most of the practical systems and construct the corresponding formation control structure. At the same time, the effects of disturbances, uncertain dynamics, random noise and unknown leader's input are considered and processed to improve the robustness and adaptability. The comprehensive and systematic treatment of practical nonlinear time-varying formation control issues is one of the major features of the book, which is particularly suited for readers who are interested to learn time-varying formation control solutions in nonlinear swarm systems. The book benefits researchers, engineers and graduate students in the fields of formation control, nonlinear control, robust control, etc.

This book features the latest theoretical results and techniques in the field of guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of vehicles and aircraft. It covers a range of topics, including, but not limited to, intelligent computing communication and control; new methods of navigation, estimation, and tracking; control of multiple moving objects; manned and autonomous unmanned systems; guidance, navigation, and control of miniature aircraft; and sensor systems for guidance, navigation, and control. Presenting recent advances in the form of illustrations, tables, and text, it also provides detailed information of a number of the studies, to offer readers insights for their own research. In addition, the book addresses fundamental concepts and studies in the development of GNC, making it a valuable resource for both beginners and researchers wanting to further their understanding of guidance, navigation, and control.

This monograph introduces recent developments in formation control of distributed-agent systems. Eschewing the traditional concern with the dynamic characteristics of individual agents, the book proposes a treatment that studies the formation control problem in terms of interactions among agents including factors such as sensing topology, communication and actuation topologies, and computations. Keeping pace with recent technological advancements in control, communications, sensing and computation that have begun to bring the applications of distributed-systems theory out of the industrial sphere and into that of day-to-day life, this monograph provides distributed control algorithms for a group of agents that may behave together. Unlike traditional control laws that usually require measurements with respect to a global coordinate frame and communications between a centralized operation center and agents, this book provides control laws that require only relative measurements and communications between agents without interaction with a centralized operator. Since the control algorithms presented in this book do not require any global sensing and any information exchanges with a centralized operation center, they can be realized in a fully distributed way, which significantly reduces the operation and implementation costs of a group of agents. Formation Control will give both students and researchers interested in pursuing this field a good grounding on which to base their work.

Space agencies are now realizing that much of what has previously been achieved using hugely complex and costly single platform projects—large unmanned and manned satellites (including the present International Space Station)—can be replaced by a number of smaller satellites networked together. The key challenge of this approach, namely ensuring the proper formation flying of multiple craft, is the topic of this second volume in Elsevier’s Astrodynamics Series, Spacecraft Formation Flying: Dynamics, control and navigation. In this unique text, authors Alfriend et al. provide a coherent discussion of spacecraft relative motion, both in the unperturbed and perturbed settings, explain the main control approaches for regulating relative satellite dynamics, using both impulsive and continuous maneuvers, and present the main constituents required for relative navigation. The early chapters provide a foundation upon which later discussions are built, making this a complete, standalone offering. Intended for graduate students, professors and academic researchers in the fields of aerospace and mechanical engineering, mathematics, astronomy and astrophysics, Spacecraft Formation Flying is a technical yet accessible, forward-thinking guide to this critical area of astrodynamics. The first book dedicated to spacecraft formation flying, written by leading researchers and professors in the field Develops the theory from an astrodynamical viewpoint, emphasizing modeling, control and navigation of formation flying satellites on Earth orbits Examples used to illustrate the main developments, with a sample simulation of a formation flying mission included to illustrate high fidelity modeling, control and relative navigation

Robot Manipulator Control offers a complete survey of control systems for serial-link robot arms and acknowledges how robotic device performance hinges upon a well-developed control system. Containing over 750 essential equations, this thoroughly up-to-date Second Edition, the book explicates theoretical and mathematical requisites for controls design and summarizes current techniques in computer simulation and implementation of controllers. It also addresses procedures and issues in computed-torque, robust, adaptive, neural network, and force control. New chapters relay practical information on commercial robot manipulators and devices and cutting-edge methods in neural network control.

This book focuses on analysis and design problems for high-order linear time-invariant (LTI) swarm systems (multi-agent systems) to achieve consensus, formation, containment and formation-containment. As a first step, the concepts of practical consensus and formation-containment are introduced. Unlike previous research, the formation in this book can be time-varying. A general framework for consensus, consensus tracking, formation, containment and state formation-containment is presented for the first time. Sufficient/necessary and sufficient conditions, and approaches to designing the protocols for swarm systems to achieve these control objectives, are respectively proposed. Autonomous time-varying formation experiments using five quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are conducted in an outdoor setting to demonstrate the theoretical results.