The collective control of multi-agent systems is a rapidly developing field, motivated by a number of engineering applications that require the coordination of a group of individually controlled systems. Applications include formation control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and spacecraft, cooperative robotics, and sensor networks e.g. for ocean sampling. A central feature of collective motions is the interplay between the information flow and the system dynamics. The talk will present our analysis of a simple multi-agent model of moving particles in the plane and overview some of the key issues of optimization-based collective control. Joint work with Naomi Leonard and Derek Paley at Princeton University, and with Luca Scardovi and Alain Sarlette at the University of Liège.
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