24 July 2012, h.11:00 - Sala 326 DEI/A

Abstract:

Cooperative control of multi-agent systems has been extensively studied in recent literature due to its large number of applications. We focus on the design of collaborative control strategies in order to achieve an underwater exploration mission. In particular, the final aim is to steer a fleet of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, which are equipped by appropriate sensors, to the location of a source of temperature, pollutant or fresh water. In this situation it is relevant to consider constraints in the communication between vehicles which are described by means of a communication graph. Our first contributions deal with the development of cooperative formation control laws which stabilize the fleet to time-varying formations and, in addition, which also distribute the vehicles uniformly along the formation. Then, we tackle the source-seeking problem by interpreting the fleet as a mobile sensor network. In particular, we propose a distributed algorithm based on consensus protocols in order to estimate the gradient direction of a signal distribution.

Biography:

Lara Briñón-Arranz was born in Madrid on July 1984, currently she's living in Grenoble, France. She received her Master degree in Automation and Electronics Engineering in 2008 from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain. She received the Ph.D. degree in Control Engineering from the University of Grenoble, France in 2011. She's currently a Temporary Assistant Professor and Researcher with the Department of Automatic Control (Gipsa-lab) at Grenoble Institute of Technology.