Energy Efficiency in Multi-Agent Coordination and Control

This dissertation focuses on the distributed control of networked cyber-physical systems when a much more energy-efficient distributed communication management strategy is proposed to solve the well-studied consensus problem. The existing potential-based network topology control method is modeled using either communication-free models or fixed communication ranges. However, this study proposes to develop a new control technique to adjust the communication range of each agent and agents' motion adaptively. The proposed network topology control technique can not only guarantee network connectivity but also reduce the communication energy. We first redesign the cooperative control algorithm and then derive an explicit bound to determine the communication ranges needed for all agents. The study addresses the variable communication range algorithm with first-order dynamics, second-order dynamics, and general linearized model. The objective is to design local topology control algorithm such that networked team agents can reach agreement on final states via designing their variable communication ranges appropriately. In addition, designed control algorithms must be able to guarantee desired connectivity properties. Theoretical analysis is then provided to show that the proposed network topology control technique can guarantee consensus with a bounded communication energy consumption. Simulation examples are finally provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms and its comparison with some existing algorithm on energy efficiency.