A central challenge in many mobile multi-robot applications is that communication topologies are inherently time-varying. Agents may enter or exit the network and such changes cannot generally be restricted a priori. This work introduces a distributed multi-agent control algorithm based on local communication that supports anytime agent joining and leaving the communication network without centralized coordination. The method scales efficiently with the number of agents by relying on a distance-based neighbor definition and on contracts derived from predicted trajectories. The resulting contract constraints guarantee collision avoidance and constraint satisfaction. We validate the proposed method in an autonomous multi-agent driving scenario, demonstrating effective collision avoidance in high-speed, dynamic environments with agents moving in opposite directions, in both simulated and real-world experiments.
This paper presents a safety-critical distributed nonlinear model predictive control (DNMPC) framework for cooperative payload transportation by teams of quadrupedal robots. The proposed approach models the robotic team and the shared payload as a dynamically coupled networked sy…
We consider defining risk probability in stochastic control problems under distribution ambiguity. Current approaches for chance-constrained control typically assume that the true state distribution is known and Gaussian distributed. These assumptions are not amenable to many rea…
Fully actuated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are usually certified through rank conditions on a control-allocation matrix or through free-flight tracking performance. For aerial physical interaction, this certification may be incomplete. During sustained contact, part of the av…
A two-stage mixed-integer linear programming framework is introduced for subsea pipeline incident response planning, jointly optimizing Subsea Docking Plate (SDP) placement and resident autonomous underwater vehicle allocation to minimize both maximum and average response times u…
This article develops a large-signal stability analysis for a sampled-data optimization-based secondary controller for distributed energy resources (DERs) in power systems. The induced closed loop combines nonlinear inverter power-flow dynamics, filtered active and reactive power…
The paper proposes a robot-agnostic compliant-control framework that extends the ROS control ecosystem with standardized joint and Cartesian command interfaces. It addresses a key limitation of existing control software: no reusable infrastructure for implementing compliant-contr…