MDLn: A Motion Description Language for networked systems

Martin, Patrick; Croix, J.-P. de la; Egersted, M.

doi:10.1109/cdc.2008.4739185

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…The definition of Motion Description Language is extended to networked system in [46]. This construction MDLn supports inter-agent specification rules as well as desired topologies, enabling to specify high-level control for group interactions.…”

Section: Symbolic Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi Aerial Robot Planning

Sebbane

2014

Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering

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Multi-robot systems are a major research topic in robotics. Designing, testing and deploying in the real world a large number of aerial robots is a concrete possibility due to the recent technological advances. The first section of this chapter treats the different aspects of cooperation in a multi-agent systems. A cooperative control should be designed in terms of the available feedback information. A cascade-type guidance law is proposed, followed by consensus approach and flocking behavior. Since information flow over the network changes over time, cooperative control must react accordingly but ensure group cooperative behavior which is the major issue in analysis and synthesis. Connectivity and convergence of formations are also studied. Team approach is followed by deterministic decision making. Plans may be required for a team of aerial robots to plan for sensing, plan for action or plan for communication. Distributed receding horizon control as well as conflict resolution, artificial potentials and symbolic planning are thus analyzed. Then, association with limited communications is studied, followed by genetic algorithms and game theory reasoning. Next, multi-agent decision making under uncertainty is considered, formulating the Bayesian decentralized team decision problem, with and without explicit communication. Algorithms for optimal planning are then introduced as well as for task allocation and distributed chance constrained task allocation. Finally, some case studies are presented such as reconnaissance mission that can be defined as the road search problem or the general vehicle routing problem. Then, an approach is considered to coordinate a group of aerial robots without a central supervision, by using only local interactions between the robots. The third case is the optimization of perimeter patrol operation. If an aerial robot must be close from a location to monitor it correctly and the number of aerial robots does not allow covering each site simultaneously, a path planning problem arises. Finally stochastic strategies for surveillance are presented.Y.

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Section: Symbolic Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi Aerial Robot Planning

Sebbane

2014

Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering

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“…Using this approach, the multi-agent "program" is checked for correctness before individual control laws are issued to the systems. Since a GPS specifies a sequence of decentralized controllers to be executed, it is more closely related to motion description languages (MDL) Brockett (1988); Manikonda et al (1998); Martin et al (2008). In particular, Martin et al (2008) created the MDLn framework to allow for multi-agent motion programs with networked information requirements built into the language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since a GPS specifies a sequence of decentralized controllers to be executed, it is more closely related to motion description languages (MDL) Brockett (1988); Manikonda et al (1998); Martin et al (2008). In particular, Martin et al (2008) created the MDLn framework to allow for multi-agent motion programs with networked information requirements built into the language. GPS differs from this work by considering a group-level view of the agents, rather than the execution of the individual agents' MDLn strings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Graph process specifications for hybrid networked systems

Twu

Martin

Egerstedt

2012

Discrete Event Dyn Syst

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Many large-scale multi-agent missions consist of a sequence of subtasks, each of which can be accomplished separately by having agents execute appropriate decentralized controllers. However, many decentralized controllers have network topological prerequisites that must be satisfied in order to achieve the desired effect on a system. Therefore, one cannot always hope to accomplish the original mission by having agents naively switch through executing the controllers for each subtask. This paper extends the Graph Process Specification (GPS) framework, which was presented in previous work as a way to script decentralized control sequences for agents, while ensuring that network topological requirements are satisfied when each controller in the sequence is executed. Atoms, the fundamental building blocks in GPS, each explicitly state a network topological transition. Moreover, they specify the means to make that transition occur by providing a multi-agent controller, as well as a way to locally detect the transition. Control design using GPS therefore reduces to selecting a sequence of atoms from a library to satisfy network topological requirements, and specifying interrupt conditions for switching. As an example of how to construct an atom library, the optimal decentralization algorithm is used to generate atoms for agents to track desired multi-agent motions with when the network topology is static. The paper concludes with a simulation of agents performing a drumline-inspired dance using decentralized controllers generated by optimal decentralization and scripted using GPS.

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“…One way in which this sequencing of motion programs can be done is in the framework of Motion Description Languages (MDL), consisting of strings of controller-interrupt pairs, e.g. [1], [7], [8]. For example, in mobile robotics, one can construct motion programs with MDL that define a sequence of behaviors for navigation through an environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding motion programs under input constraints

Martin

Egerstedt

2010

Proceedings of the 2010 American Control Conference

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We explore the effect that bounded inputs have when we specifying sequences of control laws for driving a linear, dynamical system through intermediary equilibrium points. These sequences, given in the Motion Description Language (MDL) formalism, may not be feasible in that they may violate the bounded input constraints. To overcome this problem, we augment the MDL sequences by inserting extra control modes, resulting in a new motion program that does in fact satisfy the input constraints. We first consider the problem of "compiling" the motion program for feasibility, and then propose a method that constructs new motion programs based on the input bounds, system dynamics, and task design goals.

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MDLn: A Motion Description Language for networked systems

Cited by 6 publications

References 10 publications

Multi Aerial Robot Planning

Multi Aerial Robot Planning

Graph process specifications for hybrid networked systems

Expanding motion programs under input constraints

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