Cooperative Control of Large Systems

Abstract

“Cooperative control” is a term which is used to capture those problem areas in which some type of repetition of identical or non-identical subsystems, which are interconnected together, occurs. Such systems are often found in nature, i.e. in the motion of clusters of birds, fish, insects, etc. moving together, in the cell structure of mammals and life-forms, and also in the man-made systems such as in transportation systems. In such systems, a decentralized control configuration is often applied to control the overall system, so that some common objective is achieved. It is perhaps too early to be able to list the fundamental problems arising in this problem area; there is however one important application area in which an understanding of the behaviour of the near-identical objects is desirable, and that is with respect to disease processes associated with the abnormal behaviour of certain organs of the human body. This paper gives a review of such typical example systems for the case of:

• “fish-like” objects interacting in water.

• vehicles which have the front wheel drive / steering interacting in a string formation.

• analyzing the behaviour of intestinal slow-wave patterns which occur in the human body.