Robust Macroscopic Density Control of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems

Read full text
Authors: Gian Carlo Maffettone, Davide Salzano, Mario di Bernardo
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Modern applications, such as orchestrating the collective behavior of robotic swarms or traffic flows, require the coordination of large groups of agents evolving in unstructured environments, where disturbances and unmodeled dynamics are unavoidable. In this work, we develop a scalable macroscopic density control framework in which a feedback law is designed directly at the level of an advection--diffusion partial differential equation. We formulate the control problem in the density space and prove global exponential convergence towards the desired behavior in $\mathcal{L}^2$ with guaranteed asymptotic rejection of bounded unknown drift terms, explicitly accounting for heterogeneous agent dynamics, unmodeled behaviors, and environmental perturbations. Our theoretical findings are corroborated by numerical experiments spanning heterogeneous oscillators, traffic systems, and swarm robotics in partially unknown environments.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems Stability and Controllability of Differential Equations Traffic control and management

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
10 February 2026
Language
EN
Document type
Preprint