@phdthesis{Xu2014,
  author    = {Xu, Zhihao},
  title     = {Cooperative Formation Controller Design for Time-Delay and Optimality Problems},
  isbn      = {978-3-923959-96-9},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-10555},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-105555},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {This dissertation presents controller design methodologies for a formation of cooperative mobile robots to perform trajectory tracking and convoy protection tasks. Two major problems related to multi-agent formation control are addressed, namely the time-delay and optimality problems. For the task of trajectory tracking, a leader-follower based system structure is adopted for the controller design, where the selection criteria for controller parameters are derived through analyses of characteristic polynomials. The resulting parameters ensure the stability of the system and overcome the steady-state error as well as the oscillation behavior under time-delay effect. In the convoy protection scenario, a decentralized coordination strategy for balanced deployment of mobile robots is first proposed. Based on this coordination scheme, optimal controller parameters are generated in both centralized and decentralized fashion to achieve dynamic convoy protection in a unified framework, where distributed optimization technique is applied in the decentralized strategy. This unified framework takes into account the motion of the target to be protected, and the desired system performance, for instance, minimal energy to spend, equal inter-vehicle distance to keep, etc. Both trajectory tracking and convoy protection tasks are demonstrated through simulations and real-world hardware experiments based on the robotic equipment at Department of Computer Science VII, University of W{\"u}rzburg.},
  subject      = {Optimalwertregelung},
  language  = {en}
}