Distributed Supervisory Strategies for Multi-agent Networked Systems

Novel distributed supervisory strategies for multi-agent linear systems connected via data networks and subject to coordination constraints are presented in this paper. Such a coordination-by-constraint paradigm is based on the online management of the prescribed set points and it 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. Two distributed strategies will be fully described and analysed. First, a “sequential” distributed strategy will be presented where only one agent per decision time is allowed to manipulate its own reference signal. Such a strategy will be instrumental to introduce a more effective “parallel” distributed strategy, in which all agents are allowed, under certain conditions, to modify their own reference signals simultaneously. Finally, some cases of study will be presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.