Plug-and-Play Distributed Supervision Schemes for Decoupled Interconnected Dynamical Systems

Abstract

A novel supervision scheme for the distributed management of decoupled interconnected linear systems sharing coupling coordination constraints is here proposed. It is based on the recently developed Turn-Based Command Governor strategy where the agents in the network, not jointly involved in any coupling constraint, are grouped into same particular subsets (Turns). On-line, on the basis of a round-robin policy, all agents belonging to the same turn are allowed to update simultaneously their commands while other agents keep applying their current commands. Such a strategy is here extended to safely allow Plug-and-Play (PnP) operations among the sub-systems. Formal conditions that guarantee PnP activities without violating existing constraints are provided. In this respect, the notation of Pluggability of systems that aim at joining the network is introduced as a structural property. Moreover, it is shown how to exploit the existing link to graph colorability theory to online re-configure the turns and the local CG units in response to a PnP request. A final example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.