Optimal output consensus control and outlier detection

in Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (2010)

In this paper we study the output consensus problem for systems of agents with linear continuous time invariant dynamics, and derive control laws that minimize a conical combination of the energies of the ... [more ▼]

In this paper we study the output consensus problem for systems of agents with linear continuous time invariant dynamics, and derive control laws that minimize a conical combination of the energies of the agents control signals, while only using local information. We show that the optimal control requires the connectivity graph to be complete and in general requires measurements of the state errors. We identify the cases where the optimal control is only based on output errors, and show that in the infinite time horizon case, the optimal control can always be expressed as a dynamic control that is only based on the output errors. We also give a Lemma for the position of the equilibrium point for a large class of agent dynamics. As a second part of this paper we consider the problem of outlier detection, in which an agent wants to deduce if an other agent is using the consensus controller, or if it is an outlier that uses a different controller. We introduce the outlier detection equation. [less ▲]

A comparative study of task assignment and path planning methods for multi-UGV missions

in Optimization and Cooperative Control Strategies (2009)

Many important problems involving a group of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are closely related to the multi traviling salesman problem (m-TSP). This paper comprises a comparative study of a number of ... [more ▼]

Many important problems involving a group of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are closely related to the multi traviling salesman problem (m-TSP). This paper comprises a comparative study of a number of algorithms proposed in the litterature to solve m-TSPs occuring in robotics. The investigated algoritms include two mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulations, a market based approach (MA), a Voronoi partition step (VP) combined with the local search used in MA, and a deterministic and a stocastic version of the granular tabu search (GTS). To evaluate the algoritms, an m-TSP is derived from a planar environment with polygonal obstacles and uniformly distributed targets and vehicle positions. The results of the comparison indicate that out of the decentralized approaches, the MA yield good solutions but requires long computation times, while VP is fast but not as good. The two MILP approaches suffer from long computation times, and poor results due to the decomposition of the assignment and path planning steps. Finally, the two GTS algorithms yield good results in short times with inputs from MA as well as the much faster VP. Thus the best performing centralized approach is the GTS in combination with the VP. [less ▲]

Optimal positioning of surveillance UGVs

in Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2008)

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) equipped with surveillance cameras present a flexible complement to the numerous stationary sensors being used in security applications today. However, to take full ... [more ▼]

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) equipped with surveillance cameras present a flexible complement to the numerous stationary sensors being used in security applications today. However, to take full advantage of the flexibility and speed offered by a group of UGV platforms, a fast way to compute desired camera locations that cover or surround a set of buildings e.g., in response to an alarm, is needed. In this paper we focus on two problems. The first is how to create a line-of-sight perimeter around a given set of buildings with a minimal number of UGVs. The second problem is how to find UGV positions such that a given set of walls are covered by the cameras while taking constraints in terms of zoom, range, resolution and field of view into account. For the first problem we propose a polynomial time algorithm and for the second problem we extend our previous work to include zoom cameras and furthermore provide a theoretical analysis of the approach itself. A number of examples are presented to illustrate the two algorithms. [less ▲]