Cooperative Control of Distributed Multi-agent Systems

The paradigm of ‘multi-agent’ cooperative control is the challenge frontier for new control system application domains, and as a research area it has experienced a considerable increase in activity in recent years. This volume, the result of a UCLA collaborative project with Caltech, Cornell and MIT, presents cutting edge results in terms of the “dimensions” of cooperative control from leading researchers worldwide. This dimensional decomposition allows the reader to assess the multi-faceted landscape of cooperative control.

Cooperative Control of Distributed Multi-Agent Systems is organized into four main themes, or dimensions, of cooperative control: distributed control and computation, adversarial interactions, uncertain evolution and complexity management. The military application of autonomous vehicles systems or multiple unmanned vehicles is primarily targeted; however much of the material is relevant to a broader range of multi-agent systems including cooperative robotics, distributed computing, sensor networks and data network congestion control.

Cooperative Control of Distributed Multi-Agent Systems offers the reader an organized presentation of a variety of recent research advances, supporting software and experimental data on the resolution of the cooperative control problem. It will appeal to senior academics, researchers and graduate students as well as engineers working in the areas of cooperative systems, control and optimization.

Jeff Shamma's research interest is feedback control and systems theory. He received a Ph.D. in Systems Science and Engineering in 1988 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering. His previous faculty positions have included the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the University of Texas, Austin. Since 1999, he has been with UCLA, where he is currently a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He served as the MAE Department Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs from 2000-2002.  Jeff Shamma is also the recipient of the NSF Young Investigator Award (1992), a recipient of the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award (1996), a past Plenary Speaker at the American Control Conference (1998), and a Fellow of the IEEE (2006).  He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and Systems & Control Letters.