Decentralized Receding Horizon Control: for Large-scale Dynamically Decoupled Systems

Large networks of interconnected, independently actuated systems can be found these days in a broad spectrum of applications ranging from robotics and formation flight to civil engineering. The abundance and importance of these systems will continue to grow along with the necessity of avoiding centralized control design when it becomes computationally prohibitive or requires unrealistic expectations regarding information exchange. This book proposes a decentralized optimal control framework using distributed Receding Horizon Control (RHC) schemes to address this problem, which helps overcome drawbacks of currently available methods. Stability of the proposed scheme is analyzed in detail and a number of methodologies are presented to address the problem of feasibility. The technique is illustrated by developing distributed formation control laws for cooperative Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). The presented tools and analysis should be especially useful for systems and controls engineers/researchers studying constrained optimal control using localized information, or anyone else who may be interested in working with large-scale systems and autonomous vehicle-teams.