Constrained Supervision of Networked Autonomous Vehicles

In this paper we present a predictive control strategy for the supervision of a formation of autonomous vehicles subject to coordination constraints. Such a system paradigm, referred hereafter to as constrained dynamic network, is characterized by a set of spatially distributed dynamic systems, connected via communication channels, with possibly dynamical coupling and constraints among them which need to be controlled and coordinated in order to accomplish their overall objective. The significance of the method is that it is capable of ensuring no constraints violation and loss of stability regardless of any, possibly unbounded, time-delay occurrence. An application to the coordination of two autonomous vehicles under input-saturation and formation accuracy constraints is presented.