Coordination of multi-agent systems via asynchronous cloud communication

Abstract

In this work we study a multi-agent coordination problem in which agents are only able to communicate with each other intermittently through a cloud server. To reduce the amount of required communication, we develop a self-triggered algorithm that allows agents to communicate with the cloud only when necessary rather than at some fixed period. Unlike the vast majority of similar works that propose distributed event- and/or self-triggered control laws, this work doesn't assume agents can be “listening” continuously. In other words, when an event is triggered by one agent, neighboring agents will not be aware of this until the next time they establish communication with the cloud themselves. Using a notion of “promises” about future control inputs, agents are able to keep track of higher quality estimates about their neighbors allowing them to stay disconnected from the cloud for longer periods of time while still guaranteeing a positive contribution to the task. We show that our self-triggered coordination algorithm guarantees that the system asymptotically reaches the desired state. Simulations illustrate our results.