Multivehicle systems control over networks: a hovercraft testbed for networked and decentralized control

This paper presents an overview of the hovercraft testbed for decentralized control (HoTDeC) testbed at the University of Illinois. It describes the architecture of the system and its subsystems and provides details about modeling tine system and the control dynamics of the hovercraft vehicles. The project focuses on implementing distributed strategies for coordinated maneuvers and investigating approaches for dealing systematically with network latency as well as the application of higher level control algorithms.