A Finite-Gain Stable Multi-Agent Robot Control Framework with Adaptive Authority Allocation

Abstract

Multi-agent control of a robot using multiple controllers is vital in domains like shared control and reliable control. The strategy of assigning a varying priority (authority) to each agent controller, and commanding the robot using an authority-weighted sum of the forces produced by all the agents has been exploited in prior works. In this paper, firstly, we show that this strategy results in a loss of passivity, and we identify the passivity-disrupting scaling-related terms. Secondly, we propose a model independent method to ensure finite-gain L <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> stability of such a generic multi-agent robot control system with time-varying force scaling factors. Thirdly, the analysis is validated with simulations and hardware experiments.