Decentralized Tube-based Model Predictive Control of Uncertain Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a decentralized tube-based NMPC approach for uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems, enabling robust navigation with local information while maintaining connectivity and stability under disturbances.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decentralized control scheme combining online nominal control with offline feedback to ensure robustness and connectivity in uncertain multi-agent systems.

Findings

Guarantees agents remain connected over time.

Ensures system ISS with respect to disturbances.

Validates approach through simulation results.

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of decentralized tube-based nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) for a class of uncertain nonlinear continuous-time multi-agent systems with additive and bounded disturbance. In particular, the problem of robust navigation of a multi-agent system to predefined states of the workspace while using only local information is addressed, under certain distance and control input constraints. We propose a decentralized feedback control protocol that consists of two terms: a nominal control input, which is computed online and is the outcome of a Decentralized Finite Horizon Optimal Control Problem (DFHOCP) that each agent solves at every sampling time, for its nominal system dynamics; and an additive state feedback law which is computed offline and guarantees that the real trajectories of each agent will belong to a hyper-tube centered along the nominal trajectory, for all times. The volume of the hyper-tube depends on the upper bound of the disturbances as well as the bounds of the derivatives of the dynamics. In addition, by introducing certain distance constraints, the proposed scheme guarantees that the initially connected agents remain connected for all times. Under standard assumptions that arise in nominal NMPC schemes, controllability assumptions as well as communication capabilities between the agents, we guarantee that the multi-agent system is ISS (Input to State Stable) with respect to the disturbances, for all initial conditions satisfying the state constraints. Simulation results verify the correctness of the proposed framework.