One of the main motivating forces behind the rapidly emerging theory of decentralized, cooperative control is the idea that we can deploy large collections of agents over wide spatial domains to solve otherwise intractable surveillance and monitoring problems. However, it is inevitable that in such networks, the performance will deteriorate over time as resources, such as battery power, are dep...

We present multi-agent A* (MAA*), the first complete and optimal heuristic search algorithm for solving decentralized partiallyobservable Markov decision problems (DECPOMDPs) with finite horizon. The algorithm is suitable for computing optimal plans for a cooperative group of agents that operate in a stochastic environment such as multirobot coordination, network traffic control, or distributed...

In this paper we address the problem of transporting objects with multiple mobile robots using the concept of “object closure”. In contrast to other manipulation techniques that are typically derived from form or force closure constraints, object closure requires the less stringent condition that the object be trapped or caged by the robots. Our basic goal in this paper is to develop decentrali...

The proliferation of wireless local area network (WLAN) deployments in enterprises, public areas, and homes will cause frequent geographical coverage overlap among multiple networks. A recent growing interest is the coordination among WLAN providers for efficient resource management over a large coverage area. While radio resource management for a single WLAN has been studied extensively, littl...

Rising renewable penetration has accelerated the volatility and instability of power grid. A small-scale grid is especially vulnerable. Therefore, flexibility stability enhancement are required for grids. The interconnection with large-scale through voltage sourced converter-high direct current (VSC-HVDC) can be a solution to aforementioned problems. VSC-HVDC deliver bidirectionally change dire...

For the purpose of remote command and situation awareness, multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperative surveillance with a ground station via multihop communications is presented in this paper. Considering limited communication capacities, a reliable UAV-to-UAV communication relay chain is dynamically established for connectivity maintenance and real-time surveillance information trans...

In this paper, we present a cooperative control architecture for high-order multivehicle systems having non-identical nonlinear uncertain dynamics. The proposed methodology consists of a local cooperative controller and a vehicle-level controller for each vehicle. The former controller receives the relative output measurements of the neighboring vehicles in order to solve a containment problem ...

We introduce an event driven communication logic for decentralized control of a network of robotic vehicles (agents). The strategy proposed is robust to packet losses and drives the vehicles to predefined paths while holding a desired geometric formation pattern. To this effect, the paper extends an existing cooperative path following framework to consider the practical case where communication...

Wireless OFDMA networks enable new and exciting applications but also pose significant technical challenges due to the need for decentralized control, dynamic topology and the characteristics of the wireless channel. Cooperative cross-layer design is a promising method to satisfy the network requirements. In wireless OFDMA networks working in an ad hoc model, link asymmetry exists because of th...

Mobile robot/sensor networks have emerged as tools for environmental monitoring, search and rescue, exploration and mapping, evaluation of civil infrastructure, and military operations. These networks consist of many sensors each equipped with embedded processors, wireless communication, and motion capabilities. This paper describes a cooperative mobile robot network capable of detecting and tr...