Localization: Further Results and Examples

Abstract

In this chapter, we study an extended distributed control problem: obtain one local controller for each controllable event. Thus an agent may well acquire several local controllers. In this way, further state size reduction may be achieved, simpler local controllers obtained, and the issue of event sharing among agents easily resolved. Then we illustrate localization by applying it to a number of examples drawn from multi-robot formations, manufacturing cells, and distributed computing; in each case, localization effectively creates a purely distributed control architecture where local controllers operate in parallel and achieve global optimality and nonblockingness.