Cloud-Based DMPC Simulation for Autonomous Mobile Robot Platooning

Cloud computing can be an useful tool when dealing with spatially distributed resources, which need to be simultaneously managed. In this work, a simulation environment is developed using OpenStack to apply a Distributed Model Predictive Control strategy for a platooning application consisting of multiple autonomous mobile robots. The idea is to develop the entire algorithm by taking advantage of the possibility of creating virtual machines. Thus, each autonomous mobile robot is treated as an individual agent and is modeled and controlled on a virtual machine, whereas the communication between the agents is performed in the cloud, using the TCP/IP protocol standard. The simulation results illustrate that the platooning application deployed in OpenStack outperforms the simulation performed on a single computer.