Optimal cooperation in a modified leader-follower team of agents with partial availability of leader command

The objective of this work is to design a controller for a team of agents to accomplish a cohesive motion with consensus on the agreed upon output. A modified leader-follower structure for the team is considered. The desired output (command) is available to only the leader and followers are communicating with the leader and among themselves in a predefined topology. A semi-decentralized optimal control strategy is designed based on minimization of individual cost functions over a finite horizon using local information. Decentralization is achieved through incorporating interaction terms in the team members model. Minimization of the proposed cost function results in a modified consensus algorithm for a leader-follower structure when the leader command is available partially. Introduction of a corrective feedback from followers to the leader has potential advantage of improving robustness of the team to individuals faults. Finally, simulation results are presented to show effectiveness of our proposed method in achieving predefined requirements.