Motivation

With the increasing complexity of material tranportation tasks in many AMR applications (such as, logistic centres, hobours and manufacturing), a common scenario is that multiple AGVs need to operate independently as well as in cooperation with each other. In particular, felexibility of easy transition between individual and cooperative behavior and vice versa is desirable. So is the scalability of adjusting the number of cooperating AGVs according to the situation.

A AGV fleet is a system that is physically separated during individual operation, and very tightly coupled during cooperative operation. Distributed Cooperative Control (DCC) makes use of the recent adances of time-sensitve wireless communication and embeded computing to address these challenges by allowing the AGVs to communicate and coordinate with its neighbours autonamously without relying on a central controller.

GPIO-based Delay/Jitter-Rejection Control of High Speed AMRs

Single AMR: PI Control
(subject to uncertain communicaiton delays):

Single AMR: GPIO_PI Control
(subject to uncertain communicaiton delays)

Generalized Proportional Integral Observer (GPIO)-based PI control

GPIO-based Distributed Cooperative Control of Multiple AMRs

DCC enables enhanced operational effectiveness through cooperative teamwork. Compared to autonomous vehicles that perform solo missions, greater efficiency and operational capability can be realized from teams of autonomous vehicles operating in a coordinated fashion. Compared to centralised multiple AGV coordination, greater flexibility, scalability and robustness are achieved.

More details about the AGV-related projects, can be found here

More Potential Applications

In addition to the effective operation of AMR fleets, DCC extends to applications involving multiple autonomous systems, encompassing reconfigurable flexible manufacturing, hazardous material handling, space-based interferometers, and distributed sensor networks for surveillance, combat, and reconnaissance systems. To enable these applications, various distributed cooperative control capabilities need to be developed, including resilience to communication delays and jitters, disturbance rejection control, formation control, following and tracking, distributed cooperative search and optimization, traffic control, collision avoidance, task and role assignment, and co-design of charging and dispatching.