Coordinated Control of Vehicle Groups.

摘要

This project focuses on cooperation in the context of coordinated control of distributed, autonomous agents and the collection and fusion of the sensor information that they retrieve. Central is the synthesis and analysis of high-performance, group-level properties from simple control laws at the individual agent-level. There are three main objectives: (1) to develop a theoretical paradigm for formalizing the concepts of a group, a team, and control of groups, with specified tasks such as exploring, mapping, searching, and transporting objects; (2) to develop new algorithms for the organization, reconfiguration, and control of vehicles that will scale to different types of vehicles, larger numbers, and different tasks; and (3) to develop practical tools that can be used to develop solutions to practical problems and as proofs- of-concept for testing and generating new prototypes. These practical tools include a new simulation environment and software for testing new controllers and estimators, and experimental test beds for the validation of algorithms. The paper concludes with a list of 6 papers on this subject that were presented at various symposia, 39 related publications, and 7 honors/awards.