Control of Vehicular Formations
Mihailo Jovanovic, University of Minnesota


M. R. Jovanovic
Fundamental Limitations in the Control of Vehicular Formations
Supported in part by NSF Award CMMI-09-27720

Project Synopsis

There is a growing interest in controlling formations of autonomous vehicles. I have discovered fundamental limitations in the control of large-scale formations and quantified how key system properties, such as stabilizability and detectability, deteriorate with the number of vehicles. Furthermore, I established that convergence of merge and split maneuvers scales poorly with the system size. My research also shows that in one and two spatial dimensions, with only local feedback, it is impossible to have coherent large formations, that behave like rigid frames. Yet I prove that this is possible in three spatial dimensions. Currently, I am designing optimal and robust localized controllers for formations in which the movement of each vehicle will be formed using only information from nearby vehicles. These controllers are expected to transfer salient features of collective motion observed in nature (swarming, flocking, schooling) to engineering applications. The design is being done at a level of abstraction that will allow use of localized feedback strategies in control of fluid flows, extremely large telescopes, wind farms, and high density data-storage devices.

Related Publications

  1. F. Lin, M. Fardad, and M. R. Jovanovic. Optimal control of vehicular formations with nearest neighbor interactions. IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 2012, doi:10.1109/TAC.2011.2181790; also arXiv:1112.4113v1.

  2. B. Bamieh, M. R. Jovanovic, P. Mitra, and S. Patterson. Coherence in large-scale networks: dimension dependent limitations of local feedback. IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 2012, in press; also arXiv:1112.4011v1.

  3. M. R. Jovanovic, J. M. Fowler, B. Bamieh, and R. D'Andrea. On the peaking phenomenon in the control of vehicular platoons. Syst. Control Lett., 57(7):528-537, July 2008.

  4. M. R. Jovanovic and B. Bamieh. On the ill-posedness of certain vehicular platoon control problems. IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 50(9):1307-1321, September 2005.