Analysis of coordination in multi-agent systems through Partial difference Equations. Part I: the Laplacian control
Authors: | Ferrari-Trecate Giancarlo, INRIA, France Buffa Annalisa, CNR, Italy Gati Mehdi, Renault Research Department, France |
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Topic: | 7.5 Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles |
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Session: | Multiple Vehicles I |
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Keywords: | Networked autonomous vehicles, Partial difference Equations, Formation control, Cooperative control, Decentralized control |
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Abstract
In this first part of a two-parts paper we introduce the framework of Partial differenceEquations (PdEs) over graphs for analyzing the behavior of multi-agent systems equipped with decentralized control schemes. We generalize theVicsek's model (Vicsek et al., 1995) byintroducing errors in the agent dynamics and analyze agentalignment in leaderless and leader-follower models through the joint use of PdEs andautomatic control tools. Moreover, weshow that the resulting PdEs enjoy properties that are similar tothose of well-known Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)like the heat equation, thus allowing to exploit physical-based reasoningfor conjecturing properties of the collective dynamics.