Distributed Control of Large-Scale Networked Systems

Recently, control of large-scale systems becomes more and more important in various fields, including engineering systems (e.g., sensor networks and swarm robotics) and social infrastructures (e.g., power systems and traffic systems). Because supervising all conditions in those systems is difficult, different approaches from conventional control technology are required. Distributed control is one of promising approaches effective for large-scale networked systems, comprising a large number of component systems that exchange information through communication and/or sensing networks. Over distributed control, each component system uses only local information obtained through the networks, which yields two key properties: "scalability" and "fault tolerance," necessary for controlling large-scale systems. In this study, we develop distributed control theories to achieve various tasks for such large-scale systems, and apply the theories to practical systems as follows.

  • Formation control of swarm robots
  • Large-range sensing by sensor networks
  • Distributed supply-demand control of smart grids
  • Distributed control of traffic systems


  • Figure: Formation control of swarm robots



    Figure: Distributed supply-demand control of smart grids


    ■Keywords

    Large-scale systems, Networked systems, Distributed control, Distributed optimization, Swarm robots, Sensor networks, Smart-grids

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