Distributed LQR Consensus Control for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems: Theory and Experiments

Controlling heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs) to cooperatively accomplish tasks is currently an emerging topic in the application-oriented research of robotics. This paper investigates the consensus problem of a MAS consisting of quadrotors and two-wheeled mobile robots (2WMRs). Directed and switching interaction topologies over the network are considered. We propose a distributed linear quadratic regulation (LQR) consensus protocol for the quadrotors and design an LQR-based Rotate&Run Consensus Scheme for the 2WMRs to update the states. We use the algebraic graph theory and stochastic matrix analysis to conduct the convergence analysis of consensus. The underactuation characteristic of the 2WMR dynamics is considered in the controller design. The effectiveness of the control methods is verified by simulations and experiments.