Robust Decentralized Navigation of Multi-Agent Systems with Collision Avoidance and Connectivity Maintenance Using Model Predictive Controllers

This paper addresses the problem of navigation control of a general class of 2nd order uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems in a bounded workspace, which is a subset of $R^3$ , with static obstacles. In particular, we propose a decentralized control protocol such that each agent reaches a predefined position at the workspace, while using local information based on a limited sensing radius. The proposed scheme guarantees that the initially connected agents remain always connected. In addition, by introducing certain distance constraints, we guarantee inter-agent collision avoidance as well as collision avoidance with the obstacles and the boundary of the workspace. The proposed controllers employ a class of Decentralized Nonlinear Model Predictive Controllers (DNMPC) under the presence of disturbances and uncertainties. Finally, simulation results verify the validity of the proposed framework.
Comment: To appear: International Journal of Control, 2018. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1710.09204