Title: Coordination of multi-agent systems via asynchronous cloud communication,
Abstract: In this work we study a multi-agent coordination problem in which agents are
only able to communicate with each other intermittently through a cloud server.
To reduce the amount of required communication, we develop a self-triggered
algorithm that allows agents to communicate with the cloud only when necessary
rather than at some fixed period. Unlike the vast majority of similar works
that propose distributed event- and/or self-triggered control laws, this work
doesn't assume agents can be "listening" continuously. In other words, when an
event is triggered by one agent, neighboring agents will not be aware of this
until the next time they establish communication with the cloud themselves.
Using a notion of "promises" about future control inputs, agents are able to
keep track of higher quality estimates about their neighbors allowing them to
stay disconnected from the cloud for longer periods of time while still
guaranteeing a positive contribution to the global task. We prove that our
self-triggered coordination algorithm guarantees that the system asymptotically
reaches the set of desired states. Simulations illustrate our results.