Hierarchical Pinning Control for Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems and Its Application to Vehicle Platooning
Shun Andoh, Koichi Kobayashi, Yuh Yamashita · 2020
For a multi-agent system, in which each agent communicates according to a connected graph, consensus can be achieved by a simple distributed control law. In this paper, a method of hierarchical pinning control for achieving consensus of multi-agent systems with a disconnected graph is proposed. In pinning control, the external control input is added to some agents (pinning nodes). Since it is desirable that the number of pinning nodes is small, we consider switching a pinning node. The supervisor (the high-layer controller) chooses one from the candidates of pinning nodes. The low-layer controller implemented in the chosen (activated) pinning node calculates the external control input. As an application of the proposed method, we consider vehicle platooning on a circular course.