Anytime Plug-and-Play Control with Contract-Based Distributed MPC

2026-07-05

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of cooperative control and safety in multi-robot systems arising from time-varying communication topologies and dynamic agent join/leave events. The authors propose a fully distributed model predictive control (MPC) framework that relies solely on local communication and distance-based neighbor relationships. By generating contract-like constraints from predicted trajectories, the method enables plug-and-play operation at any time without requiring centralized coordination. Notably, this approach is the first to support dynamic agent insertion and removal in a completely decentralized architecture while rigorously guaranteeing collision avoidance and satisfaction of state constraints. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method are validated through simulations and real-world experiments in high-speed bidirectional autonomous driving scenarios under dynamic conditions.

Abstract

A central challenge in many mobile multi-robot applications is that communication topologies are inherently time-varying. Agents may enter or exit the network and such changes cannot generally be restricted a priori. This work introduces a distributed multi-agent control algorithm based on local communication that supports anytime agent joining and leaving the communication network without centralized coordination. The method scales efficiently with the number of agents by relying on a distance-based neighbor definition and on contracts derived from predicted trajectories. The resulting contract constraints guarantee collision avoidance and constraint satisfaction. We validate the proposed method in an autonomous multi-agent driving scenario, demonstrating effective collision avoidance in high-speed, dynamic environments with agents moving in opposite directions, in both simulated and real-world experiments.

Problem

• time-varying communication
• multi-agent systems
• distributed control
• collision avoidance
• anytime plug-and-play

Innovation

• Anytime Plug-and-Play Control
• Contract-Based Distributed MPC
• Time-Varying Communication Topology
• Collision Avoidance
• Scalable Multi-Agent Control