(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-09)
Haque, Musad A.; Rahmani, Amir R.; Egerstedt, Magnus B.
Social behavior of animals can offer solution models for missions involving a large number of
heterogeneous vehicles, such as light combat ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, and unmanned underwater
vehicles. We draw inspiration from the foraging techniques of bottlenose dolphins to address the
problem of heterogeneous multi-agent herding. We produce a hybrid automaton model of the entire
foraging method - search, detect, and capture - where agents are modeled as first-order systems in which
interactions are defined through spatial proximity. Finally, simulations are provided to illustrate that our
model is expressive enough to capture this complex biological phenomenon.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-04)
Ding, Xu Chu; Rahmani, Amir R.; Egerstedt, Magnus B.
In this paper, we study time-optimal trajectories
for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to provide convoy protection
to a group of stationary ground vehicles. The UAVs
are modelled as Dubins vehicles flying at a constant altitude.
Due to kinematic constraints of the UAVs, it is not possible for
a single UAV to provide convoy protection indefinitely. In this
paper, we derive time-optimal paths for a single UAV to provide
continuous ground convoy protection for the longest possible
time. Furthermore, this paper provides optimal trajectories for multiple UAVs to achieve uninterrupted convoy protection. The minimum number of UAVs required to achieve this task is
determined.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-02)
Rahmani, Amir R.; Ji, Meng; Mesbahi, Mehran; Egerstedt, Magnus B.
In this work, we consider the controlled agreement problem for multi-agent networks,
where a collection of agents take on leader roles while the remaining agents execute local,
consensus-like protocols. Our aim is to identify reflections of graph-theoretic notions on system-theoretic
properties of such systems. In particular, we show how the symmetry structure of the
network, characterized in terms of its automorphism group, directly relates to the controllability of
the corresponding multi-agent system. Moreover, we introduce network equitable partitions as a means by which such controllability characterizations can be extended to the multileader setting.