Partially cooperative robust distributed model predictive control for tracking

This work investigates a partially-cooperative coalitional control setting for input-coupled multi-agent linear systems to robustly track changing setpoints. Within this framework, agents have the flexibility to share a public portion of their input, ceding control authority to neighbors, while keeping the rest private. Instead of coordinating the predicted control inputs, the bounds that define the public and private input constraint sets are negotiated in a distributed manner when the need arises, significantly reducing communicated data within the cooperation network. Coupling disturbances are considered through a tube-based approach, which steers the system to the desired target points while guaranteeing recursive feasibility and stability through tracking techniques. Finally, the approach is validated through simulations on an eight-input coupled tank benchmark.