Distributed Time-Varying Quadratic Optimal Resource Allocation Subject to Nonidentical Time-Varying Hessians With Application to Multiquadrotor Hose Transportation

This article considers the distributed time-varying optimal resource allocation problem with time-varying quadratic cost functions and a time-varying coupled equality constraint for multiagent systems. The objective is to design a distributed algorithm for agents with single-integrator dynamics to cooperatively satisfy the coupled equality constraint and minimize the sum of all local cost functions. Here, both the coupled equality constraint and cost functions depend explicitly on time. The cost functions are in quadratic form and may have nonidentical time-varying Hessians. To solve the problem in a distributed manner, an estimator based on the distributed average tracking method is first developed for each agent to estimate certain global information. By leveraging the estimated global information and an adaptive gain scheme, a distributed continuous-time algorithm is proposed, which ensures the agents to find and track the time-varying optimal trajectories with vanishing errors. We illustrate the applicability of the proposed method in the optimal hose transportation problem using multiple quadrotors.

Automated summary

This article discusses the distributed time-varying optimal resource allocation problem for multiagent systems with time-varying quadratic cost functions and a time-varying coupled equality constraint. A distributed algorithm is designed to satisfy the constraint and minimize the sum of cost functions, ensuring the agents to find and track the optimal trajectories.