This paper addresses a formation problem for a network of autonomous agents with second-order dynamics and bounded disturbances. Coordination is achieved by having the agents asynchronously upload (download) data to (from) a shared repository, rather than directly exchanging data with other agents. Well-posedness of the closed-loop system is demonstrated by showing that there exists a lower bound for the time interval between two consecutive agent accesses to the repository. Numerical simulations corroborate the theoretical results.

We consider the problem of approximating flow functions of continuous-time dynamical systems with inputs. It is well-known that continuous-time recurrent neural networks are universal approximators of this type of system. In this paper, we prove that an architecture based on discrete-time recurrent neural networks universally approximates flows of continuous-time dynamical systems with inputs. The required assumptions are shown to hold for systems whose dynamics are well-behaved ordinary differential equations and with practically relevant classes of input signals. This enables the use of off-the-shelf solutions for learning such flow functions in continuous-time from sampled trajectory data.

In this paper we consider a mobile platform controlled by two entities; an autonomousagent and a human user. The human aims for the mobile platform to complete a task, whichwe will denote as the human task, and will impose a control input accordingly, while not beingaware of any other tasks the system should or must execute. The autonomous agent will in turnplan its control input taking in consideration all safety requirements which must be met, sometask which should be completed as much as possible (denoted as the robot task), as well aswhat it believes the human task is based on previous human control input. A framework for theautonomous agent and a mixed initiative controller are designed to guarantee the satisfaction ofthe safety requirements while both the human and robot tasks are violated as little as possible.The framework includes an estimation algorithm of the human task which will improve witheach cycle, eventually converging to a task which is similar to the actual human task. Hence, theautonomous agent will eventually be able to find the optimal plan considering all tasks and thehuman will have no need to interfere again. The process is illustrated with a simulated example

Service assurance for cloud applications is a challenging task and is an active area of research for academia and industry. One promising approach is to utilize machine learning for service quality prediction and fault detection so that suitable mitigation actions can be executed. In our previous work, we have shown how to predict service-level metrics in real-time just from operational data gathered at the server side. This gives the service provider early indications on whether the platform can support the current load demand. This paper provides the logical next step where we extend our work by proposing an automated detection and diagnostic capability for the performance faults manifesting themselves in cloud and datacenter environments. This is a crucial task to maintain the smooth operation of running services and minimizing downtime. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach which exploits the interpretative capabilities of Self- Organizing Maps (SOMs) to automatically detect and localize different performance faults for cloud services.

The energy sector is going through a large transformation due to public demands of renewable energy sources. However, a major issue is that these energy sources are intermittent. If designed correctly, district heating systems can naturally contain energy storing units, for example by storing heat in the isolated pipes that make up the heat grid. Additionally, this makes it easier to reuse and transport already generated heat to other users. This paper proposes a mathematical model of such a grid, where excess energy can be retracted from one user and distributed to other users using a network of heat pumps. In some cases, one can balance residual heat production with the heat consumption, temporarily eliminating the need for a centralized heating plant. Existence conditions for stable steady states of such a network with general topology are given. Finally, energy optimal stable steady states are obtained through convex optimization. 

Electric trucks usually need to charge their batteries during long-range delivery missions, and the charging times are often nontrivial. As charging resources are limited, waiting times for some trucks can be prolonged at certain stations. To facilitate the efficient operation of electric trucks, we propose a distributed charging coordination framework. Within the scheme, the charging stations provide waiting estimates to incoming trucks upon request and assign charging ports according to the first-come, first-served rule. Based on the updated information, the individual trucks compute where and how long to charge whenever approaching a charging station in order to complete their delivery missions timely and cost-effectively. We perform empirical studies for trucks traveling over the Swedish road network and compare our scheme with the one where charging plans are computed offline, assuming unlimited charging facilities. It is shown that the proposed scheme outperforms the offline approach at the expense of little communication overhead.

Recent trends envisage robots being deployed in areas deemed dangerous to humans, such as buildings with gas and radiation leaks. In such situations, the model of the underlying hazardous process might be unknown to the agent a priori, giving rise to the problem of planning for safe behaviour in partially known environments. We employ Gaussian process regression to create a probabilistic model of the hazardous process from local noisy samples. The result of this regression is then used by a risk metric, such as the Conditional Value-at-Risk, to reason about the safety at a certain state. The outcome is a risk function that can be employed in optimal motion planning problems. We demonstrate the use of the proposed function in two approaches. First is a sampling-based motion planning algorithm with an event-based trigger for online replanning. Second is an adaptation to the incremental Gaussian Process motion planner (iGPMP2), allowing it to quickly react and adapt to the environment. Both algorithms are evaluated in representative simulation scenarios, where they demonstrate the ability of avoiding high-risk areas.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) approaches have emerged in the networking domain with great expectation. They can be broadly divided into AI/ML techniques for network engineering and management, network designs for AI/ML applications, and system concepts. AI/ML techniques for networking and management improve the way we address networking. They support efficient, rapid, and trustworthy engineering, operations, and management. As such, they meet the current interest in softwarization and network programmability that fuels the need for improved network automation in agile infrastructures, including edge and fog environments. Network design and optimization for AI/ML applications addresses the complementary topic of supporting AI/ML-based systems through novel networking techniques, including new architectures and algorithms. The third topic area is system implementation and open-source software development.

We study the computation of the global generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) for a class of non-convex multi-player games, where players' actions are subject to both local and coupling constraints. Due to the non-convex payoff functions, we employ canonical duality to reformulate the setting as a complementary problem. Under given conditions, we reveal the relation between the stationary point and the global GNE. According to the convex-concave properties within the complementary function, we propose a continuous-time mirror descent to compute GNE by generating functions in the Bregman divergence and the damping-based design. Then, we devise several Lyapunov functions to prove that the trajectory along the dynamics is bounded and convergent.

Undetectable attacks are an important class of malicious attacks threatening the security of cyber-physical systems, which can modify a system's state but leave the system output measurements unaffected and hence cannot be detected from the output. This paper studies undetectable attacks on cone-invariant systems and multi-agent systems. We first provide a general characterization of zero-dynamics attacks, which characterizes fully undetectable attacks targeting the nonminimum phase zeros of a system. This geometrical characterization makes it possible to develop a defense strategy seeking to place a minimal number of sensors to detect and counter the zero-dynamics attacks on the system's actuators. The detect and defense scheme amounts to computing a set containing potentially vulnerable actuator locations and nodes and a defense union for feasible placement of sensors based on the geometrical properties of the cones under consideration.

The voltage received by each customer connected to a power distribution line with local controllers (inverters) is regulated to be within a desired margin through a class of slope-restricted controllers, known conventionally as droop controllers. We adapt the design of the droop controllers according to the known bounds of the net power consumption of each customer in each observation time window. A sufficient condition for voltage regulation is provided for each time window, which guides the design of the droop controllers, depending on the properties of the distribution line (line impedances) and the upper bound of all the customers' power consumption during each time window. The resulting adaptive scheme is verified on a benchmark model of a European low-voltage network by the CIGRE task force. 

Motivated by the environmental and economical benefits of using renewable energy, we consider the problem of regulating the voltage of a power distribution network in a line configuration where each customer is equipped with an inverter. The substation at the head of the line determines the nominal voltage level which is communicated to each customer in the distribution line. The voltage level of each customer is regulated by an inverter which generates reactive power according to our class of droop controllers satisfying the sloperestriction property. This paper provides a sufficient condition for regulating the customers' voltage level within a desired band, which depends on the properties of the distribution line (line impedances) and the droop controller employed. This is achieved when only the upper bound of all the customers' net power usage is known, thereby preserving the privacy of each customer. Simulation studies are performed on a benchmark model for a distribution system with renewable sources. 

We consider the problem of voltage regulation for a power distribution network where each inverter-equipped customer is connected sequentially with the sub-station at the head of the line. The substation dictates the desired voltage and transmits the reference voltage to each inverter in the distribution line. The inverter generates reactive power using our modified droop control law, which regulates the voltage level by influencing the power flow in the line, described by the DistFlow model. This paper provides conditions on the distribution line (the line impedances), the droop control law employed, and the nominal voltage level at the substation such that the each customer's voltage level are within a desired margin, when only the bound on the customers' overall power consumption is known. Thereby preserving the privacy of each customer's net power usage. We have also widened the choice of droop functions by only requiring them to be sector bounded. Simulation studies are provided to illustrate our results. 

In current research one of the main challenges in short range synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is electrically small structures and objects, which tend to unclear reinforced or through the wall objects, object orientation angle, and obscure contribution to extract the position of concealed multiple small objects. In this paper, ultra-wide-band (UWB) polarimetric radar was used to study reinforced objects and for estimation of object angle at short range. Electrically small 1D periodic mesh, 2D periodic meshes and differently oriented small objects or meshes could not be distinguished in conventional SAR images. A radar system with transmit and receive antennae mounted on a two dimensional scanning grid was used. The aim is non-destructive testing of built structures, in concrete slab manufacturing and for use in the renovation process. UWB short range radar data and images corresponding to different polarization states were analysed by using singular value decomposition (SVD). To perform decomposition, the proposed approach applies SVD to image data matrices produced from the back projection algorithm (BPA) to classify the different objects and identify the object angle. Then, sets of singular-components of different polarization states are analysed to classify objects. Also, the BPA algorithm is performed to construct the object images from the polarimetric radar signals. The object reflection varied with the polarimetric state of the UWB radar, which contributes to different object signatures (i.e., object intensity) since the object signature depends on the orientation, the size, and the number of objects. Object orientation with respect to the radar system and object anisotropy could be determined from the ratio of the different polarimetric singular-components. This proposed complex data analysis method demonstrates the usefulness of the SVD using BPA in extracting more information about and for classifying an object.

This paper studies Hamel's formalism for simple hybrid mechanical control systems and explores the role of time-reversal symmetries and hybrid zero dynamics to predict the existence of periodic orbits in these control system. A time reversal symmetry in the phase-space permits us to construct a time reversible hybrid Hamiltonian system. If the Hamiltonian function describing the continuous dynamics and the impact map are invariants under a time reversal symmetry on the zero hybrid dynamics, under some mild conditions, we find sufficient conditions for the existence of periodic solutions for the class of simple hybrid Hamiltonian control systems.

In this work we study an optimal control problem for a multi-agent system modeled by an undirected formation graph with nodes describing the kinematics of each agent, given by a left invariant control system on a Lie group. The agents should avoid collision between them in the workspace. Such a task is done by introducing some potential functions into the cost functional for the optimal control problem, corresponding to fictitious forces, induced by the formation constraint among agents, that break the symmetry of the individual agents and the cost functions, and rendering the optimal control problem partially invariant by a Lie group of symmetries. Reduced necessary conditions for the existence of normal extremals are obtained using techniques of variational calculus on manifolds. As an application we study an optimal control problem for multiple unicycles.

We study the problem of motion feasibility for multiagent control systems on Lie groups with collision-avoidance constraints. We first consider the problem for kinematic left-invariant control systems and next, for dynamical control systems given by a left-trivialized Lagrangian function. Solutions of the kinematic problem give rise to linear combinations of the control inputs in a linear subspace, annihilating the collision-avoidance constraints. In the dynamical problem, motion feasibility conditions are obtained by using techniques from variational calculus on manifolds, given by a set of equations in a vector space, and Lagrange multipliers annihilating the constraint force that prevents the deviation of solutions from a constraint submanifold.

In this paper, a novel distributed control strategy addressing a (feasible) psycho-social-physical welfare problem in islanded Direct Current (DC) smart grids is proposed. Firstly, we formulate a (convex) optimization problem that allows prosumers to share current with each other, taking into account the technical and physical aspects and constraints of the grid (e.g., stability, safety), as well as psycho-social factors (i.e., prosumers' personal values). Secondly, we design a controller whose (unforced) dynamics represent the continuous time primal-dual dynamics of the considered optimization problem. Thirdly, a passive interconnection between the physical grid and the controller is presented. Global asymptotic convergence of the closed-loop system to the desired steady-state is proved and simulations based on collected data on psycho-social aspects illustrate and confirm the theoretical results.

A stochastic self-triggered model predictive control (SSMPC) algorithm is proposed for linear systems subject to exogenous disturbances and probabilistic constraints. The main idea behind the self-triggered framework is that at each sampling instant, an optimization problem is solved to determine both the next sampling instant and the control inputs to be applied between the two sampling instants. Although the self-triggered implementation achieves communication reduction, the control commands are necessarily applied in open-loop between sampling instants. To guarantee probabilistic constraint satisfaction, necessary and sufficient conditions are derived on the nominal systems by using the information on the distribution of the disturbances explicitly. Moreover, based on a tailored terminal set, a multi-step open-loop MPC optimization problem with infinite prediction horizon is transformed into a tractable quadratic programming problem with guaranteed recursive feasibility. The closed-loop system is shown to be stable. Numerical examples illustrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme in terms of performance, constraint satisfaction, and reduction of both control updates and communications with a conventional time-triggered scheme.

A distributed stochastic model predictive control algorithm is proposed for multiple linear subsystems with both parameter uncertainty and stochastic disturbances, which are coupled via probabilistic constraints. To handle the probabilistic constraints, the system dynamics is first decomposed into a nominal part and an uncertain part. The uncertain part is further divided into 2 parts: the first one is constrained to lie in probabilistic tubes that are calculated offline through the use of the probabilistic information on disturbances, whereas the second one is constrained to lie in polytopic tubes whose volumes are optimized online and whose facets' orientations are determined offline. By permitting a single subsystem to optimize at each time step, the probabilistic constraints are then reduced into a set of linear deterministic constraints, and the online optimization problem is transformed into a convex optimization problem that can be performed efficiently. Furthermore, compared to a centralized control scheme, the distributed stochastic model predictive control algorithm only requires message transmissions when a subsystem is optimized, thereby offering greater flexibility in communication. By designing a tailored invariant terminal set for each subsystem, the proposed algorithm can achieve recursive feasibility, which, in turn, ensures closed-loop stability of the entire system. A numerical example is given to illustrate the efficacy of the algorithm. Copyright 

Modern autonomous systems typically use several sensors for perception. For best performance, accurate and reliable extrinsic calibration is necessary. In this research, we propose a reliable technique for the extrinsic calibration of several lidars on a vehicle without the need for odometry estimation or fiducial markers. First, our method generates an initial guess of the extrinsics by matching the raw signals of IMUs co-located with each lidar. This initial guess is then used in ICP and point cloud feature matching which refines and verifies this estimate. Furthermore, we can use observability criteria to choose a subset of the IMU measurements that have the highest mutual information - rather than comparing all the readings. We have successfully validated our methodology using data gathered from Scania test vehicles.

We consider a finite-horizon linear-quadratic optimal control problem where only a limited number of control messages are allowed for sending from the controller to the actuator. To restrict the number of control actions computed and transmitted by the controller, we employ a threshold-based event-triggering mechanism that decides whether or not a control message needs to be calculated and delivered. Due to the nature of threshold-based event-triggering algorithms, finding the optimal control sequence requires minimizing a quadratic cost function over a nonconvex domain. In this paper, we first provide an exact solution to this nonconvex problem by solving an exponential number of quadratic programs. To reduce computational complexity, we then propose two efficient heuristic algorithms based on greedy search and the alternating direction method of multipliers technique. Later, we consider a receding horizon control strategy for linear systems controlled by event-triggered controllers, and we further provide a complete stability analysis of receding horizon control that uses finite-horizon optimization in the proposed class. Numerical examples testify to the viability of the presented design technique.

In this paper, we consider the distributed optimization problem, whose objective is to minimize the global objective function, which is the sum of local convex objective functions, by using local information exchange. To avoid continuous communication among the agents, we propose a distributed algorithm with a dynamic event-triggered communication mechanism. We show that the distributed algorithm with the dynamic event-triggered communication scheme converges to the global minimizer exponentially, if the underlying communication graph is undirected and connected. Moreover, we show that the event-triggered algorithm is free of Zeno behavior. For a particular case, we also explicitly characterize the lower bound for inter-event times. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations.

This paper proposes novel event-triggered strategies for the control of uncertain nonlinear systems with additive disturbances under robust Nonlinear Model Predictive Controllers (NMPC). The main idea behind the event-driven framework is to trigger the solution of the optimal control problem of the NMPC, only when it is needed. The updates of the control law depend on the error of the actual and the predicted trajectory of the system. Sufficient conditions for triggering are provided for both, continuous and discrete-time nonlinear systems. The closed-loop system evolves to a compact set where it is ultimately bounded, under the proposed framework. The results are illustrated through a simulated example.

In system identification, it is often difficult to use a physical intuition when choosing a noise model structure. The importance of this choice is that, for the prediction error method (PEM) to provide asymptotically efficient estimates, the model orders must be chosen according to the true system. However, if only the plant estimates are of interest and the experiment is performed in open loop, the noise model can be over-parameterized without affecting the asymptotic properties of the plant. The limitation is that, as PEM suffers in general from non-convexity, estimating an unnecessarily large number of parameters will increase the risk of getting trapped in local minima. Here, we consider the following alternative approach. First, estimate a high-order ARX model with least squares, providing non-parametric estimates of the plant and noise model. Second, reduce the high-order model to obtain a parametric model of the plant only. We review existing methods to do this, pointing out limitations and connections between them. Then, we propose a method that connects favorable properties from the previously reviewed approaches. We show that the proposed method provides asymptotically efficient estimates of the plant with open-loop data. Finally, we perform a simulation study suggesting that the proposed method is competitive with state-of-the-art methods.

In this paper, we introduce the method of two-way coding, a concept originating in communication theory characterizing coding schemes for two-way channels, into (networked) feedback control systems under injection attacks. We first show that the presence of two-way coding can distort the perspective of the attacker on the control system. In general, the distorted viewpoint on the attacker side as a consequence of two-way coding will facilitate detecting the attacks, or restricting what the attacker can do, or even correcting the attack effect. In the particular case of zero-dynamics attacks, if the attacks are to be designed according to the original plant, then they will be easily detected; while if the attacks are designed with respect to the equivalent plant as viewed by the attacker, then under the additional assumption that the plant is stabilizable by static output feedback, the attack effect may be corrected in steady state.

In this chapter, we use Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) units to preserve the privacy of households with smart meters in addition to regulating indoor temperature. We model the effect of the HVAC unit as an additive noise in the household consumption. The Cramér-Rao bound is used to relate the inverse of the trace of the Fisher information matrix to the quality of an adversary’s estimation error of the household private consumption from the aggregate consumption of the household with the HVAC unit. This establishes the Fisher information as the measure of privacy leakage. We compute the optimal privacy-preserving policy for controlling the HVAC unit through minimizing a weighted sum of the Fisher information and the cost operating the HVAC unit. The optimization problem also contains the constraints on the temperatures of the house. 

We consider the linear quadratic regulation problem when the plant is an unknown linear dynamical system. We present robust model-based methods based on convex optimization, which minimize the worst-case cost with respect to uncertainty around model estimates. To quantify uncertainty, we derive a methodbased on Bayesian inference, which is directly applicable to robust control synthesis.We focus on control policies that can be iteratively updated after sequentially collecting data. More specifically, we seek to design control policies that balance exploration (reducing model uncertainty) and exploitation (control of the system) when exploration must be safe (robust).First, we derive a robust controller to minimize the worst-case cost, with high probability, given the empirical observation of the system. This robust controller synthesis is then used to derive a robust dual controller, which updates its control policy after collecting data. An episode in which data is collected is called exploration, and the episode using an updated control policy is exploitation. The objective is to minimize the worst-case cost of the updated control policy, requiring that a given exploration budget constrains the worst-case cost during exploration.We look into robust dual control in both finite and infinite horizon settings. The main difference between the finite and infinite horizon settings is that the latter does not consider the length of the exploration and exploitation phase, but it rather approximates the cost using the infinite horizon cost. In the finite horizon setting, we discuss how different exploration lengths affect the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.Additionally, we derive methods that balance exploration and exploitation to minimize the cumulative worst-case cost for a fixed number of episodes. In this thesis, we refer to such a problem as robust reinforcement learning. Essentially, it is a robust dual controller aiming to minimize the cumulative worst-case cost, and that updates its control policy in each episode.Numerical experiments show that the proposed methods have better performance compared to existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, experiments also indicate that the exploration prioritizes the uncertainty reduction in the parameters that matter most for control.

Identification of a complete dynamic network affected by sensor noise using the prediction error method is often too complex. One of the reasons for this complexity is the requirement to minimize a non-convex cost function, which becomes more difficult with more complex networks. In this paper, we consider serial cascade networks affected by sensor noise. Recently, the Weighted Null-Space Fitting method has been shown to be appropriate for this setting, providing asymptotically efficient estimates without suffering from non-convexity; however, applicability of the method was subject to some conditions on the locations of sensors and excitation signals. In this paper, we drop such conditions, proposing an extension of the method that is applicable to general serial cascade networks. We formulate an algorithm that describes application of the method in a general setting, and perform a simulation study to illustrate the performance of the method, which suggests that this extension is still asymptotically efficient.

We analyze stability properties of monotone nonlinear systems via max-separable Lyapunov functions, motivated by the following observations: first, recent results have shown that asymptotic stability of a monotone nonlinear system implies the existence of a max-separable Lyapunov function on a compact set; second, for monotone linear systems, asymptotic stability implies the stronger properties of D-stability and insensitivity to time delays. This paper establishes that for monotone nonlinear systems, equivalence holds between asymptotic stability, the existence of a max-separable Lyapunov function, D-stability, and insensitivity to bounded and unbounded time-varying delays. In particular, a new and general notion of D-stability for monotone nonlinear systems is discussed, and a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for delay-independent stability are derived. Examples show how the results extend the state of the art.

, with static obstacles. In particular, we propose a decentralised control protocol such that each agent reaches a predefined position at the workspace, while using local information based on a limited sensing radius. The proposed scheme guarantees that the initially connected agents remain always connected. In addition, by introducing certain distance constraints, we guarantee inter-agent collision avoidance as well as collision avoidance with the obstacles and the boundary of the workspace. The proposed controllers employ a class of Decentralized Nonlinear Model Predictive Controllers (DNMPC) under the presence of disturbances and uncertainties. Finally, simulation results verify the validity of the proposed framework.

We consider the problem of tracking moving algal bloom fronts using an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) equipped with a sensor that measures the concentration of chlorophyll a. Chlorophyll a is a green pigment found in plants, and its concentration is an indicator of phytoplankton abundance. Our algal bloom front tracking mission consists of three stages: deployment, data collection, and front tracking. At the deployment stage, a satellite collects an image of the sea from which the location of the front, the reference value for the concentration at this front and, consequently, the appropriate initial position for the USV are determined. At the data collection stage, the USV collects data points to estimate the local algal gradient as it crosses the front. Finally, at the front tracking stage, an adaptive algorithm based on recursive least squares fitting using recent past sensor measures is executed. We evaluate the performance of the algorithm and its sensitivity to measurement noise through MATLAB simulations. We also present an implementation of the algorithm on the DUNE onboard software platform for marine robots and validate it using simulations with satellite model forecasts from Baltic sea data.

This paper investigates using satellite data to improve adaptive sampling missions, particularly for front tracking scenarios such as with algal blooms. Our proposed solution to find and track algal bloom fronts uses an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) equipped with a sensor that measures the concentration of chlorophyll a and satellite data. The proposed method learns the kernel parameters for a Gaussian process (GP) model using satellite images of chlorophyll a from the previous days. Then, using the data collected by the AUV, it models chlorophyll a concentration online. We take the gradient of this model to obtain the direction of the algal bloom front and feed it to our control algorithm. The performance of this method is evaluated through realistic simulations for an algal bloom front in the Baltic sea, using the models of the AUV and the chlorophyll a sensor. We compare the performance of different estimation methods, from GP to curve interpolation using least squares. Sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of sensor noise on the methods’ performance. We implement our method on an AUV and run experiments in the Stockholm archipelago in the summer of 2022. 

This paper proposes a method that uses satellite data to improve adaptive sampling missions. We find and track algal bloom fronts using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with a sensor that measures the concentration of chlorophyll a. Chlorophyll a concentration indicates the presence of algal blooms. The proposed method learns the kernel parameters of a Gaussian process model using satellite images of chlorophyll a from previous days. The AUV estimates the chlorophyll a concentration online using locally collected data. The algal bloom front estimate is fed to the motion control algorithm. The performance of this method is evaluated through simulations using a real dataset of an algal bloom front in the Baltic. We consider a real-world scenario with sensor and localization noise and with a detailed AUV model.

In this paper we consider the problem of tracking a mobile target using adaptive estimation while circumnavigating it with a system of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs). The mobile target considered is an irregular dynamic shape approximated by a circle with moving centre and varying radius. The USV system is composed of n USVs of which one is equipped with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capable of measuring both the distance to the boundary of the target and to its centre. This USV equipped with the UAV uses adaptive estimation to calculate the location and size of the mobile target. The USV system must circumnavigate the boundary of the target while forming a regular polygon. We design two algorithms: One for the adaptive estimation of the target using the UAV’s measurements and another for the control protocol to be applied by all USVs in their navigation. The convergence of both algorithms to the desired state is proved up to a limit bound. Two simulated examples are provided to verify the performance of the algorithms designed in this paper.

Harmful algal blooms occur frequently and deteriorate water quality. A reliable method is proposed in this paper to track algal blooms using a set of autonomous surface robots. A satellite image indicates the existence and initial location of the algal bloom for the deployment of the robot system. The algal bloom area is approximated by a circle with time varying location and size. This circle is estimated and circumnavigated by the robots which are able to locally sense its boundary. A multi-agent control algorithm is proposed for the continuous monitoring of the dynamic evolution of the algal bloom. Such algorithm comprises of a decentralised least squares estimation of the target and a controller for circumnavigation. We prove the convergence of the robots to the circle and in equally spaced positions around it. Simulation results with data provided by the SINMOD ocean model are used to illustrate the theoretical results.

In identification of dynamical systems, the prediction error method with a quadratic cost function provides asymptotically efficient estimates under Gaussian noise, but in general it requires solving a nonconvex optimization problem, which may imply convergence to nonglobal minima. An alternative class of methods uses a nonparametric model as intermediate step to obtain the model of interest. Weighted null-space fitting (WNSF) belongs to this class, starting with the estimate of a nonparametric ARX model with least squares. Then, the reduction to a parametric model is a multistep procedure where each step consists of the solution of a quadratic optimization problem, which can be obtained with weighted least squares. The method is suitable for both open- and closed-loop data, and can be applied to many common parametric model structures, including output-error, ARMAX, and Box-Jenkins. The price to pay is the increase of dimensionality in the nonparametric model, which needs to tend to infinity as function of the sample size for certain asymptotic statistical properties to hold. In this paper, we conduct a rigorous analysis of these properties: namely, consistency, and asymptotic efficiency. Also, we perform a simulation study illustrating the performance of WNSF and identify scenarios where it can be particularly advantageous compared with state-of-the-art methods.

An invariant cover quantifies the information needed by a controller to enforce an invariance specification. This paper investigates some fundamental problems concerning existence and computation of an invariant cover for uncertain discrete-time linear control systems subject to state and control constraints. We develop necessary and sufficient conditions on the existence of an invariant cover for a polytopic set of states. The conditions can be checked by solving a set of linear programs, one for each extreme point of the state set. Based on these conditions, we give upper and lower bounds on the minimal cardinality of the invariant cover, and design an iterative algorithm with finite-time convergence to compute an invariant cover. We further show in two examples how to use an invariant cover in the design of a coder-controller pair that ensures invariance of a given set for a networked control system with a finite communication data rate.

This paper proposes a solution to the overtaking problem where an automated vehicle tries to overtake a human-driven vehicle, which may not be moving at a constant velocity. Using reachability theory, we first provide a robust time-optimal control algorithm to guarantee that there is no collision throughout the overtaking process. Following the robust formulation, we provide a stochastic reachability formulation that allows a trade-off between the conservative overtaking time and the allowance of a small collision probability. To capture the stochasticity of a human driver's behavior, we propose a new martingale-based model where we classify the human driver as aggressive or nonaggressive. We show that if the human driver is nonaggressive, our stochastic time-optimal control algorithm can provide a shorter overtaking time than our robust algorithm, whereas if the human driver is aggressive, the stochastic algorithm will act on a collision probability of zero, which will match the robust algorithm. Finally, we detail a simulated example that illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. 

We propose a shared autonomy approach for implementing human operator decisions onto an automated system during multi-objective missions, while guaranteeing safety and mission completion. A mission is specified as a set of linear temporal logic (LTL) formulae. Then, using a novel correspondence between LTL and reachability analysis, we synthesize a set of controllers for assisting the human operator to complete the mission, while guaranteeing that the system maintains specified spatial and temporal properties. We assume the human operator's exact preference of how to complete the mission is unknown. Instead, we use a datadriven approach to infer and update the automated system's internal belief of which specified objective the human intends to complete. If, while the human is operating the system, she provides inputs that violate any of the invariances prescribed by the LTL formula, our verified controller will use its internal belief of the human operator's intended objective to guide the operator back on track. Moreover, we show that as long as the specifications are initially feasible, our controller will stay feasible and can guide the human to complete the mission despite some unexpected human errors. We illustrate our approach with a simple, but practical, experimental setup where a remote operator is parking a vehicle in a parking lot with multiple parking options. In these experiments, we show that our approach is able to infer the human operator's preference over parking spots in real-time and guarantee that the human will park in the spot safely. 

Queue overflow of a dynamic queue system gives rise to the information loss (or packet loss) in the communication buffer or the decrease of throughput in the transportation network. This paper investigates a stochastic optimal control problem for dynamic queue systems when imposing probability constraints on queue overflows. We reformulate this problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) with safety constraints. We prove that both finite-horizon and infinite-horizon stochastic optimal control for MDP with such constraints can be transformed as a linear program (LP), respectively. Feasibility conditions are provided for the finite-horizon constrained control problem. Two implementation algorithms are designed under the assumption that only the state (not the state distribution) can be observed at each time instant. Simulation results compare optimal cost and state distribution among different scenarios, and show the probability constraint satisfaction by the proposed algorithms.

Safe driving requires autonomous vehicles to anticipate potential hidden traffic participants and other unseen objects, such as a cyclist hidden behind a large vehicle, or an object on the road hidden behind a building. Existing methods are usually unable to consider all possible shapes and orientations of such obstacles. They also typically do not reason about observations of hidden obstacles over time, leading to conservative anticipations. We overcome these limitations by (1) modeling possible hidden obstacles as a set of states of a point mass model and (2) sequential reasoning based on reachability analysis and previous observations. Based on (1), our method is safer, since we anticipate obstacles of arbitrary unknown shapes and orientations. In addition, (2) increases the available drivable space when planning trajectories for autonomous vehicles. In our experiments, we demonstrate that our method, at no expense of safety, gives rise to significant reductions in time to traverse various intersection scenarios from the CommonRoad Benchmark Suite.

This paper presents the formulation and analysis of a fully distributed dynamic event-triggered communication based robust dynamic average consensus algorithm. Dynamic average consensus problem involves a networked set of agents estimating the time-varying average of dynamic reference signals locally available to individual agents. We propose an asymptotically stable solution to the dynamic average consensus problem that is robust to network disruptions. Since this robust algorithm requires continuous communication among agents, we introduce a novel dynamic event-triggered communication scheme to reduce the overall inter-agent communications. It is shown that the event-triggered algorithm is asymptotically stable and free of Zeno behavior. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

We test the robustness of a maximum-likelihood (ML) based classifier where sequential data as observation is corrupted by noise. The hypothesis is that a generative model, that combines the state transitions of a hidden Markov model (HMM) and the neural network based probability distributions for the hidden states of the HMM, can provide a robust classification performance. The combined model is called normalizing-flow mixture model based HMM (NMM-HMM). It can be trained using a combination of expectation-maximization (EM) and backpropagation. We verify the improved robustness of NMM-HMM classifiers in an application to speech recognition.

We present a tracking controller for mobile multi-robot systems based on dual quaternion pose representations applied to formations of robots in a leader-follower configuration, by using a cluster-space state approach. The proposed controller improves system performance with respect to previous works by reducing steady-state tracking errors. The performance is evaluated through experimental field tests with a formation of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), as well as a formation of two UAVs.

The indirect approach to continuous-time system identification consists in estimating continuous-time models by first determining an appropriate discrete-time model. For a zero-order hold sampling mechanism, this approach usually leads to a transfer function estimate with relative degree 1, independent of the relative degree of the strictly proper real system. In this paper, a refinement of these methods is developed. Inspired by the indirect prediction error method, we propose an estimator that enforces a fixed relative degree in the continuous-time transfer function estimate, and show that the estimator is consistent and asymptotically efficient. Extensive numerical simulations are put forward to show the performance of this estimator when contrasted with other indirect and direct methods for continuous-time system identification.

This article studies epidemic processes over discrete-time periodic time-varying networks. We focus on the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model that accounts for a (possibly) mutating virus. We say that an agent is in the disease-free state if it is not infected by the virus. Our objective is to devise a control strategy which ensures that all agents in a network exponentially (respectively asymptotically) converge to the disease-free equilibrium (DFE). Toward this end, we first provide 1) sufficient conditions for exponential (respectively, asymptotic) convergence to the DFE and 2) a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic convergence to the DFE. The sufficient condition for global exponential stability (GES) [respectively global asymptotic stability (GAS)] of the DFE is in terms of the joint spectral radius of a set of suitably defined matrices, whereas the necessary and sufficient condition for GAS of the DFE involves the spectral radius of an appropriately defined product of matrices. Subsequently, we leverage the stability results in order to design a distributed control strategy for eradicating the epidemic.

This paper presents a distributed control strategy for a multi-agent system commanded by a set of leaders that has to accomplish a high-level plan consisting of a sequence of tasks specified by a state-space region and a timed constraint. The agents are also subject to relative-distance constraints with its neighbors. The solution consists in an adaptive distributed mechanism to update the feedback gains for the leader agents, which is executed following a self-triggered algorithm. The results show how the proposed approach provides less conservative results than if feedback gains are held constant, and are illustrated with a simulation example. 

This paper considers the motion control and task planning problem of mobile robots under complex high-level tasks and human initiatives. The assigned task is specified as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas that consist of hard and soft constraints. The human initiative influences the robot autonomy in two explicit ways: with additive terms in the continuous controller and with contingent task assignments. We propose an online coordination scheme that encapsulates (i) a mixed-initiative continuous controller that ensures all-time safety despite of possible human errors, (ii) a plan adaptation scheme that accommodates new features discovered in the workspace and short-term tasks assigned by the operator during run time, and (iii) an iterative inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) algorithm that allows the robot to asymptotically learn the human preference on the parameters during the plan synthesis. The results are demonstrated by both realistic human-in-the-loop simulations and experiments.