arXiv subjects

Xiaoming Hu

Publications and source records attributed to Xiaoming Hu.

35 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Continuous-Time Inverse Quadratic Optimal Control Problem

In this paper, the problem of finite horizon inverse optimal control (IOC) is investigated, where the quadratic cost function of a dynamic process is required to be recovered based on the observation of optimal control sequences. We propose the first complete result of the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of corresponding LQ cost functions. Under feasible cases, the analytic expression of the whole solution space is derived and the equivalence of weighting matrices in LQ problems is discussed. For infeasible problems, an infinite dimensional convex problem is formulated to obtain a best-fit approximate solution with minimal control residual. And the optimality condition is solved under a static quadratic programming framework to facilitate the computation. Finally, numerical simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed methods.

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arXiv2018

Projected Primal-Dual Gradient Flow of Augmented Lagrangian with Application to Distributed Maximization of the Algebraic Connectivity of a Network

In this paper, a projected primal-dual gradient flow of augmented Lagrangian is presented to solve convex optimization problems that are not necessarily strictly convex. The optimization variables are restricted by a convex set with computable projection operation on its tangent cone as well as equality constraints. As a supplement of the analysis in \cite{niederlander2016distributed}, we show that the projected dynamical system converges to one of the saddle points and hence finding an optimal solution. Moreover, the problem of distributedly maximizing the algebraic connectivity of an undirected network by optimizing the port gains of each nodes (base stations) is considered. The original semi-definite programming (SDP) problem is relaxed into a nonlinear programming (NP) problem that will be solved by the aforementioned projected dynamical system. Numerical examples show the convergence of the aforementioned algorithm to one of the optimal solutions. The effect of the relaxation is illustrated empirically with numerical examples. A methodology is presented so that the number of iterations needed to reach the equilibrium is suppressed. Complexity per iteration of the algorithm is illustrated with numerical examples.

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arXiv2018

Inverse Quadratic Optimal Control for Discrete-Time Linear Systems

In this paper, we consider the inverse optimal control problem for the discrete-time linear quadratic regulator, over finite-time horizons. Given observations of the optimal trajectories, and optimal control inputs, to a linear time-invariant system, the goal is to infer the parameters that define the quadratic cost function. The well-posedness of the inverse optimal control problem is first justified. In the noiseless case, when these observations are exact, we analyze the identifiability of the problem and provide sufficient conditions for uniqueness of the solution. In the noisy case, when the observations are corrupted by additive zero-mean noise, we formulate the problem as an optimization problem and prove the statistical consistency of the problem later. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated through numerical examples.

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arXiv2018

An Intrinsic Approach to Formation Control of Regular Polyhedra for Reduced Attitudes

This paper addresses formation control of reduced attitudes in which a continuous control protocol is proposed for achieving and stabilizing all regular polyhedra (also known as Platonic solids) under a unified framework. The protocol contains only relative reduced attitude measurements and does not depend on any particular parametrization as is usually used in the literature. A key feature of the control proposed is that it is intrinsic in the sense that it does not need to incorporate any information of the desired formation. Instead, the achieved formation pattern is totally attributed to the geometric properties of the space and the designed inter-agent connection topology. Using a novel coordinates transformation, asymptotic stability of the desired formations is proven by studying stability of a constrained nonlinear system. In addition, a methodology to investigate stability of such constrained systems is also presented.

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arXiv2018

Interval Consensus for Multiagent Networks

The constrained consensus problem considered in this paper, denoted interval consensus, is characterized by the fact that each agent can impose a lower and upper bound on the achievable consensus value. Such constraints can be encoded in the consensus dynamics by saturating the values that an agent transmits to its neighboring nodes. We show in the paper that when the intersection of the intervals imposed by the agents is nonempty, the resulting constrained consensus problem must converge to a common value inside that intersection. In our algorithm, convergence happens in a fully distributed manner, and without need of sharing any information on the individual constraining intervals. When the intersection of the intervals is an empty set, the intrinsic nonlinearity of the network dynamics raises new challenges in understanding the node state evolution. Using Brouwer fixed-point theorem we prove that in that case there exists at least one equilibrium, and in fact the possible equilibria are locally stable if the constraints are satisfied or dissatisfied at the same time among all nodes. For graphs with sufficient sparsity it is further proven that there is a unique equilibrium that is globally attractive if the constraint intervals are pairwise disjoint.

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arXiv2017

Consensus Control for Linear Systems with Optimal Energy Cost

In this paper, we design an optimal energy cost controller for linear systems asymptotic consensus given the topology of the graph. The controller depends only on relative information of the agents. Since finding the control gain for such controller is hard, we focus on finding an optimal controller among a classical family of controllers which is based on Algebraic Riccati Equation (ARE) and guarantees asymptotic consensus. Through analysis, we find that the energy cost is bounded by an interval and hence we minimize the upper bound. In order to do that, there are two classes of variables that need to be optimized: the control gain and the edge weights of the graph and are hence designed from two perspectives. A suboptimal control gain is obtained by choosing $Q=0$ in the ARE. Negative edge weights are allowed, and the problem is formulated as a Semi-definite Programming (SDP) problem. Having negative edge weights means that "competitions" between the agents are allowed. The motivation behind this setting is to have a better system performance. We provide a different proof from the angle of optimization and show that the lowest control energy cost is reached when the graph is complete and with equal edge weights. Furthermore, two sufficient conditions for the existence of negative optimal edge weights realization are given.

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arXiv2017

Intrinsic Reduced Attitude Formation with Ring Inter-Agent Graph

This paper investigates the reduced attitude formation control problem for a group of rigid-body agents using feedback based on relative attitude information. Under both undirected and directed cycle graph topologies, it is shown that reversing the sign of a classic consensus protocol yields asymptotical convergence to formations whose shape depends on the parity of the group size. Specifically, in the case of even parity the reduced attitudes converge asymptotically to a pair of antipodal points and distribute equidistantly on a great circle in the case of odd parity. Moreover, when the inter-agent graph is an undirected ring, the desired formation is shown to be achieved from almost all initial states.

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arXiv2017

Finite-time attitude synchronization with distributed discontinuous protocols

The finite-time attitude synchronization problem is considered in this paper, where the rotation of each rigid body is expressed using the axis-angle representation. Two discontinuous and distributed controllers using the vectorized signum function are proposed, which guarantee almost global and local convergence, respectively. Filippov solutions and non-smooth analysis techniques are adopted to handle the discontinuities. Sufficient conditions are provided to guarantee finite-time convergence and boundedness of the solutions. Simulation examples are provided to verify the performances of the control protocols designed in this paper.

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arXiv2017

Finite-time attitude synchronization with a discontinuous protocol

A finite-time attitude synchronization problem is considered in this paper where the rotation of each rigid body is expressed using the axis-angle representation. One simple discontinuous and distributed controller using the vectorized signum function is proposed. This controller only involves the sign of the state differences of adjacent neighbors. In order to avoid the singularity introduced by the axis-angular representation, an extra constraint is added to the initial condition. It is proved that for some initial conditions, the control law achieves finite-time attitude synchronization. One simulated example is provided to verify the usage of the control protocol designed in this paper.

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arXiv2017

A geodesic feedback law to decouple the full and reduced attitude

This paper presents a novel approach to the problem of almost global attitude stabilization. The reduced attitude is steered along a geodesic path on the n-sphere. Meanwhile, the full attitude is stabilized on SO(n). This action, essentially two maneuvers in sequel, is fused into one smooth motion. Our algorithm is useful in applications where stabilization of the reduced attitude takes precedence over stabilization of the full attitude. A two parameter feedback gain affords further trade-offs between the full and reduced attitude convergence speed. The closed loop kinematics on SO(3) are solved for the states as functions of time and the initial conditions, providing precise knowledge of the transient dynamics. The exact solutions also help us to characterize the asymptotic behavior of the system such as establishing the region of attraction by straightforward evaluation of limits. The geometric flavor of these ideas is illustrated by a numerical example.

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arXiv2016

Intrinsic Tetrahedron Formation of Reduced Attitude

In this paper, formation control for reduced attitude is studied, in which both stationary and rotating regular tetrahedron formation can be achieved and are asymptotically stable under a large family of gain functions in the control. Moreover, by further restriction on the control gain, almost global stability of the stationary formation is obtained. In addition, the control proposed is an intrinsic protocol that only uses relative information and does not need to contain any information of the desired formation beforehand. The constructed formation pattern is totally attributed to the geometric properties of the space and the designed inter-agent connection topology. Besides, a novel coordinates transformation is proposed to represent the relative reduced attitudes in S^2, which is shown to be an efficient approach to reduced attitude formation problems.

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arXiv2016

Distributed sampled-data control of nonholonomic multi-robot systems with proximity networks

This paper considers the distributed sampled-data control problem of a group of mobile robots connected via distance-induced proximity networks. A dwell time is assumed in order to avoid chattering in the neighbor relations that may be caused by abrupt changes of positions when updating information from neighbors. Distributed sampled-data control laws are designed based on nearest neighbour rules, which in conjunction with continuous-time dynamics results in hybrid closed-loop systems. For uniformly and independently initial states, a sufficient condition is provided to guarantee synchronization for the system without leaders. In order to steer all robots to move with the desired orientation and speed, we then introduce a number of leaders into the system, and quantitatively establish the proportion of leaders needed to track either constant or time-varying signals. All these conditions depend only on the neighborhood radius, the maximum initial moving speed and the dwell time, without assuming a prior properties of the neighbor graphs as are used in most of the existing literature.

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arXiv2015

Consensus and Formation Control on SE(3) for Switching Topologies

This paper addresses the consensus problem and the formation problem on SE(3) in multi-agent systems with directed and switching interconnection topologies. Several control laws are introduced for the consensus problem. By a simple transformation, it is shown that the proposed control laws can be used for the formation problem. The design is first conducted on the kinematic level, where the velocities are the control laws. Then, for rigid bodies in space, the design is conducted on the dynamic level, where the torques and the forces are the control laws. On the kinematic level, first two control laws are introduced that explicitly use Euclidean transformations, then separate control laws are defined for the rotations and the translations. In the special case of purely rotational motion, the consensus problem is referred to as consensus on SO(3) or attitude synchronization. In this problem, for a broad class of local representations or parameterizations of SO(3), including the Axis-Angle Representation, the Rodrigues Parameters and the Modified Rodrigues Parameters, two types of control laws are presented that look structurally the same for any choice of local representation. For these two control laws we provide conditions on the initial rotations and the connectivity of the graph such that the system reaches consensus on SO(3). Among the contributions of this paper, there are conditions for when exponential rate of convergence occur. A theorem is provided showing that for any choice of local representation for the rotations, there is a change of coordinates such that the transformed system has a well known structure.

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arXiv2015

Optimal output consensus for linear systems: A topology free approach

In this paper, for any homogeneous system of agents with linear continuous time dynamics, we formulate an optimal control problem. In this problem a convex cost functional of the control signals of the agents shall be minimized, while the outputs of the agents shall coincide at some given finite time. This is an instance of the rendezvous or finite time consensus problem. We solve this problem without any constraints on the communication topology and provide a solution as an explicit feedback control law for the case when the dynamics of the agents is output controllable. It turns out that the communication graph topology induced by the solution is complete. Based on this solution for the finite time consensus problem, we provide a solution to the case of infinite time horizon. Furthermore, we investigate under what circumstances it is possible to express the controller as a feedback control law of the output instead of the states.

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arXiv2014

Shaping up crowd of agents through controlling their statistical moments

In a crowd model based on leader-follower interactions, where positions of the leaders are viewed as the control input, up-to-date solutions rely on knowledge of the agents' coordinates. In practice, it is more realistic to exploit knowledge of statistical properties of the group of agents, rather than their exact positions. In order to shape the crowd, we study thus the problem of controlling the moments instead, since it is well known that shape can be determined by moments. An optimal control for the moments tracking problem is obtained by solving a modified Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation, which only uses the moments and leaders' states as feedback. The optimal solution can be solved fast enough for on-line implementations.

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arXiv2014

Convergence Tools for Consensus in Multi-Agent Systems with Switching Topologies

We present two main theorems along the lines of Lyapunov's second method that guarantee asymptotic state consensus in multi-agent systems of agents in R^m with switching interconnection topologies. The two theorems complement each other in the sense that the first one is formulated in terms of the states of the agents in the multi-agent system, whereas the second one is formulated in terms of the pairwise states for each pair of agents in the multi-agent system. In the first theorem, under the assumption that the interconnection topology is uniformly strongly connected and the agents are contained in a compact set, a strong form of attractiveness of the consensus set is assured. In the second theorem, under the weaker assumption that the interconnection topology is uniformly quasi strongly connected, the consensus set is guaranteed to be uniformly asymptotically stable.

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arXiv2011

Nonlinear filtering in target tracking using cooperative mobile sensors

Collaborative signal processing and sensor deployment have been among the most important research tasks in target tracking using networked sensors. In this paper, the mathematical model is formulated for single target tracking using mobile nonlinear scalar range sensors. Then a sensor deployment strategy is proposed for the mobile sensors and a nonlinear convergent filter is built to estimate the trajectory of the target.

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