CIRCULAR FORMATION OF GENERAL LINEAR AGENTS WITH OUTPUT FEEDBACK

Abstract

This thesis investigates circular formation in a multi-agent system (MAS) where each agent has the same general linear dynamics. A distributed controller is proposed where at least one agent knows its absolution position while the rest can only measure relative position information. The design is based on the output regulation methodology but uses the output feedback controller. The scheme has the advantage of a simpler design as the parameters are decoupled. The communication and sensor graphs should be such that (i) each agent can receive the compensator states of its neighbors through communication, and (ii) the communication graph is the same as the sensor graph and it contains a directed spanning tree. In addition, the case where compensator states cannot be communicated is also discussed. A method to compare two different common solvability conditions in output regulation theory is also proposed. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the results.