Distributed IDA-PBC for a class of nonholonomic mechanical systems

Nonholonomic mechanical systems encompass a large class of practically interesting robotic structures, such as wheeled mobile robots, space manipulators, and multi-fingered robot hands. However, few results exist on the cooperative control of such systems in a generic, distributed approach. In this work we extend a recently developed...

Distributed computational framework for large-scale stochastic convex optimization

This paper presents a distributed computational framework for stochastic convex optimization problems using the so-called scenario approach. Such a problem arises, for example, in a large-scale network of interconnected linear systems with local and common uncertainties. Due to the large number of required scenarios to approximate the...

Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) smart grids: Large-scale seasonal energy storage as a distributed energy management solution

Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) is a building technology used to seasonally store thermal energy in the subsurface, which can reduce the energy use of larger buildings by more than half. The spatial layout of ATES systems is a key aspect for the technology, as thermal interactions between neighboring systems can degrade system performance....

Differentially-private distributed fault diagnosis for large-scale nonlinear uncertain systems 

Distributed fault diagnosis has been proposed as an effective technique for monitoring large scale, nonlinear and uncertain systems. It is based on the decomposition of the large scale system into a number of interconnected subsystems, each one monitored by a dedicated Local Fault Detector (LFD). Neighboring LFDs, in order to successfully...

Distributed control of heterogeneous underactuated mechanical systems

We show how passivity-based control by interconnection and damping assignment (IDA-PBC) can be used as a design procedure to derive distributed control laws for undirected connected networks of underactuated and fully-actuated heterogeneous mechanical systems. With or without leaders, agents are able to reach a stationary formation in the...

A Jacobi decomposition algorithm for distributed convex optimization in Distributed Model Predictive Control

In this paper we introduce an iterative distributed Jacobi algorithm for solving convex optimization problems, which is motivated by distributed model predictive control (MPC) for linear time-invariant systems. Starting from a given feasible initial guess, the algorithm iteratively improves the value of the cost function with guaranteed...

A Decomposition-Based Approach to Linear Time-Periodic Distributed Control of Satellite Formations

In this paper, we consider the problem of designing a distributed controller for a formation of spacecraft following a periodic orbit. Each satellite is controlled locally on the basis of information from only a subset of the others (the nearest ones). We describe the dynamics of each spacecraft by means of a linear time-periodic (LTP)...