A distributed economic MPC scheme for coordination of self-interested systems

In this work, we propose a distributed economic MPC framework for cooperative control of self-interested interacting dynamical systems. The self-interest of the systems is reflected by an individual local cost function each agent is trying to minimize, while cooperation is enforced by means of coupling constraints. We show that satisfaction of both transient and asymptotic coupling constraints as well as closed-loop convergence to the overall optimal steady-state can be established. A specific feature of the proposed control scheme is that the overall optimal steady-state needs not be known a priori, but can be determined online via distributed optimization. We illustrate our results with the problem of reaching consensus under conflicting objectives.