An Adaptive Approach for Multi-Agent Formation Control in MANET Based on CPS Perspective

Abstract

From Cyber Physical System (CPS) perspective, it is nature for the system to tightly couple the communications and computing aspects with its physical dynamics. In this paper, we investigate this characteristic for multi-agent formation control in Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET). We manage to measure the real time wireless network congestion, implement a wireless QoS mechanism to provide different network channel access priorities and come up with the emergency calculation. Based on these, we present our adaptive approach for formation control. To examine the benefit of our approach, we use a co-simulation tool that we have developed for evaluating networked control & cyber physical system to study a specific scenario, in which five follower agents plus one leader perform a specific formation within a MANET with different congestion conditions. Through simulation experiments, it is showed that our approach could adaptively adjust sample periods and network channel access priorities according to real time dynamics emergencies and the network traffics condition, so as to optimize network utilization and improve the formation control performance