Cooperative control of dynamically decoupled systems via distributed model predictive control

In this paper, we propose a general framework for distributed model predictive control of discrete-time nonlinear systems with decoupled dynamics but subject to coupled constraints and a common cooperative task. To ensure recursive feasibility and convergence to the desired cooperative goal, the systems optimize a local cost function in a sequential order, whereas only neighbor-to-neighbor communication is allowed. In contrast to most of the existing distributed model predictive control schemes in the literature, we do not necessarily consider the stabilization of an a priori known set point. Instead, also other cooperative control tasks such as consensus and synchronization problems can be handled within the proposed framework. In particular, one of our main contributions is to show how for the latter case the terminal cost functions and the terminal region can be suitably defined and computed. Furthermore, we illustrate our results with simulation examples. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.