Bounded Connectivity-Preserving Coordination of Networked Euler-Lagrange Systems

TL;DR

This paper develops strategies for maintaining network connectivity in Euler-Lagrange systems with actuation bounds and uncertainties, using scaled control laws, filters, and damping to ensure stable coordination.

Contribution

It introduces two novel control strategies that incorporate actuation bounds and uncertainties for connectivity preservation in Euler-Lagrange networks.

Findings

Conditions for bounded connectivity-preserving coordination are derived.

Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed strategies.

Abstract

This paper derives sufficient conditions for bounded distributed connectivity-preserving coordination of Euler-Lagrange systems with only position measurements and with system uncertainties, respectively. The paper proposes two strategies that suitably scale conventional gradient-based controls to account for the actuation bounds and to reserve sufficient actuation for damping injection. For output feedback control of networked systems with only position measurements, the paper incorporates a first-order filter to estimate velocities and to inject damping for stability. For networks of uncertain systems, the paper augments conventional linear filter-based adaptive compensation with damping injection to maintain the local connectivity of the network. Analyses based on monotonically decreasing Lyapunov-like functions and Barbalat's lemma lead to sufficient conditions for bounded local connectivity-preserving coordination of Euler-Lagrange networks under the two strategies. The sufficient conditions clarify the interrelationships among the bounded actuations, initial system velocities and initial inter-system distances. Simulation results validate these conditions.