Distributed Coordination-by-Constraint Strategies for Networked Control Systems

In this paper we present preliminary ideas on how to develop distributed supervision strategies for networked control systems subject to coordination constraints to be enforced on-line. Such a coordination paradigm, hereafter referred to as coordination-by-constraint, is characterized by a set of spatially distributed dynamic systems, connected via communication channels, with possibly dynamical coupling amongst them which need to be supervised and coordinated in order to accomplish their overall objective. In order to evaluate the distributed method here proposed, the distributed coordination of coupled autonomous vehicles under input-saturation and formation accuracy constraints is presented as an example.