The Mathematics of Formation Control
Department of Electrical Engineering Seminar
Brian Anderson
Emeritus Professor, Australian National University and Distinguished Professor, Hangzhou Dianzi University
"The Mathematics of Formation Control"
Abstract: Formations of mobile agents, including unmanned airborne vehicles, may often be used to localize objects in the environment, and many control problems arise. For example, often, such formations should take up a particular shape. What needs to be measured and what needs to be controlled to maintain a prescribed shape? Can control be distributed, i.e. can one arrange for each agent just to observe its neighbors and act appropriately, and yet have the whole formation behave correctly? How can a desired shape be established? What is the effect of noise distorting the measurements? How can an entire formation shape be preserved while the formation translates from A to B? The resolution of these questions draws ideas from diverse mathematical subfields, including graph theory, dynamical systems, Riemannian manifolds and Morse theory. The lecture will illustrate a number of these problems, particularly the mathematical tools involved in resolving them.
Bio: Brian Anderson is an Emeritus Professor at Australian National University and a Distinguished Professor at Hangzhou Dianzi University. He ie a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control. He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Science. He has received many awards including the IEEE Field Award in Control Systems and the IEEE James H. Mulligan Education Medal.