Safe Control of Multi-Agent Systems with Minimal Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces a control design method for multi-agent systems that minimizes communication while ensuring safety and coordination, addressing bandwidth and latency constraints effectively.

Contribution

It formulates the control synthesis as a rank minimization problem and applies convex relaxation via system level synthesis for scalable multi-agent control.

Findings

Significantly reduces inter-agent communication compared to baseline methods.

Ensures safety and coordination under communication delay constraints.

Effective in trajectory tracking with heterogeneous sensing.

Abstract

In many multi-agent systems, communication is limited by bandwidth, latency, and energy constraints. Designing controllers that achieve coordination and safety with minimal communication is critical for scalable and reliable deployment. This paper presents a method for designing controllers that minimize inter-agent communication in multi-agent systems while satisfying safety and coordination requirements, while conforming to communication delay constraints. The control synthesis problem is cast as a rank minimization problem, where a convex relaxation is obtained via system level synthesis. Simulation results on various tasks, including trajectory tracking with relative and heterogeneous sensing, demonstrate that the proposed method significantly reduces inter-agent transmission compared to baseline approaches.