KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Distributed Information Processing and Control of Multi-agent Networks

Lihua Xie
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract

Multi-agent cooperation involves a collection of decision-making components with limited processing, limited sensing and limited communications capabilities, all seeking to achieve a collective objective. Well known examples include mobile sensor networks for environment monitoring and surveillance and multi-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) formation flight. The distributed nature of information processing, sensing and actuation makes these applications a significant departure from the traditional centralized control system paradigm. There have been many approaches to multi-agent cooperation. In this talk, we shall focus on a consensus based approach and discuss issues related to limited communications (communication topology and data rate) and their impacts on the performance of multi-agent systems. A fundamental relationship between distributed consensusability and agent dynamics, network topology and communication data rate will be revealed. The application of the distributed consensus in formation control will be demonstrated.

Biography of the Keynote Speaker

Lihua Xie received the B.E. and M.E. degrees from Nanjing University of Science and Technology in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 1992. He was with the Department of Automatic Control, Nanjing University of Science and Technology from 1986 to 1989. Since 1992, he has been with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is currently a professor and head of Division of Control and Instrumentation and Director, Center for E-City. His current research interests include robust control and estimation, sensor networks, networked control systems, multi-agent systems, and control of disk drive systems.
He has authored/co-authored over 210 journal papers, 230 conference papers, two patents and four books: H-infinity Control and Filtering of Two-dimensional Systems (with C. Du, Springer, 2002); Optimal and Robust Estimation (with F. Lewis, D. Popa, CRC Press, 2007); Control and Estimation of Systems with Input/Output Delays (with H. Zhang, Springer, 2007); and Modeling and Control of Vibration in Mechanical Systems with C. Du, CRC Press, 2010). He received IBM Faculty Award in 2011 and the best paper awards from the 7th Asian Control Conference, the 6th World Congress of Intelligent Control and Automation, and the 6th International Conference on Information, Communications, and Signal processing. He is currently an editor, IET Book Series on Control and associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. He served as an associate editor of several journals including Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and IEEE Transactions on Circuit and Systems-II. He was the General Chairman of the 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision and the 7th IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation, and the Program Chair of the forth IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation and the 8th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision.
Dr Xie is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of IFAC.