Emergent Behavior Detection and Task Coordination for Multiagent Systems: A Distributed Estimation and Control Approach

This book addresses problems in the modeling, detection, and control of emergent behaviors and task coordination in multiagent systems. It presents a unified solution to such problems in terms of distributed estimation, distributed control, and optimization of interaction topologies and dynamics. Four aspects of the technical solutions in the book are presented: First, the impact of interaction dynamics on the convergence conditions related to interaction topologies is discussed, utilizing a discontinuous cooperative control algorithm of updated design. Second, distributed least-squares and Kalman filtering algorithms for agents with limited interactions are elaborated upon. Third, a general framework of distributed nonlinear control is established, and distributed adaptive control for nonlinear systems with more general uncertainties is presented. Based on the proposed framework, a distributed nonlinear controller is designed to deal with task coordination of robotic systems with nonholonomic constraints. Finally, the problem of optimal multiagent task coordination is addressed and solutions based on approximate dynamic programming and approximate distributed gradient estimation are presented. Emergent Behavior Detection and Task Coordination for Multiagent Systems is of interest to practicing engineers in areas such as robotics and cyber-physical systems, researchers in the field of systems, controls, and robotics, and senior undergraduate and graduate students.