Cooperative event-based control of mobile objects over an unreliable communication network

This paper proposes an event-based method for the cooperative control of two mobile objects (agents). The aim is to plan online collision-free trajectories locally for the agents and to follow these trajectories even under the influence of external disturbances. The method is able to react to changes of the trajectory of the nearby agent. It uses only locally measured data and information, which is sent over an unreliable communication network and may be delayed or lost. The agents are divided into a stand-on agent and a give-way agent. The first agent follows its trajectory, which may be changed to avoid collisions with static obstacles. The second agent has to avoid a collision with the first agent. To this aim, a control unit is used that executes four tasks: Estimation of the current network properties, prediction of the movement of the stand-on agent, invocation of communication, planning of collision-free trajectories. A simulation study with two quadrotors illustrates the operating principle of the method.