Control of Large Scale Multi-Agent Systems: A
UCAV example
Datta Godbole
Honeywell Technology Center
Distributed multi-agent systems arise in many application areas, such as
Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems, Automotive Control, Flight Control
and
Flight Management Systems, Network of Satellites, Power Generation and
Distribution Systems, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, and Communication
Networks. Most of these systems are currently designed and operated by
ad-hoc divide and conquer approaches in which the problem is first
decomposed into smaller manageable sub-problems and solved
independently.
This results in very conservative designs and under-utilization of
resources. Control of such complex large-scale systems poses challenging
problems of both theoretical and practical significance.
We propose a three level hierarchical architecture for control of
large-scale systems. The top level of the hierarchy is concerned with
resource allocation among various components/agents of the system. Lower
levels of the hierarchy involve local performance optimization for each
agent including inter-agent coordination and conflict resolution.
We will demonstrate our approach with an integrated trajectory planning
and
control of a group of unmanned air vehicles. Traditional control
synthesis
methods use models of plant or process to be controlled, in off-line
generation of feedback controllers for specific objectives such as set
point
or trajectory tracking. Control of unmanned air vehicles requires
increased
automation much beyond the traditional control systems. Autonomous
operation
requires both trajectory design (planning) and trajectory tracking
(control)
tasks to be completely automated. We use multiple models at different
resolution and time-scales to achieve seamless integration of planning
and control.