Adaptive Deadlock Avoidance for Decentralized Multi-agent Systems via CBF-inspired Risk Measurement

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Yanze, Lyu, Yiwei, Jo, Siwon, Yang, Yupeng, Luo, Wenhao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912272009396224
author Zhang, Yanze
Lyu, Yiwei
Jo, Siwon
Yang, Yupeng
Luo, Wenhao
author_facet Zhang, Yanze
Lyu, Yiwei
Jo, Siwon
Yang, Yupeng
Luo, Wenhao
contents Decentralized safe control plays an important role in multi-agent systems given the scalability and robustness without reliance on a central authority. However, without an explicit global coordinator, the decentralized control methods are often prone to deadlock -- a state where the system reaches equilibrium, causing the robots to stall. In this paper, we propose a generalized decentralized framework that unifies the Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) and Control Barrier Function (CBF) to facilitate efficient task execution and ensure deadlock-free trajectories for the multi-agent systems. As the agents approach the deadlock-related undesirable equilibrium, the framework can detect the equilibrium and drive agents away before that happens. This is achieved by a secondary deadlock resolution design with an auxiliary CBF to prevent the multi-agent systems from converging to the undesirable equilibrium. To avoid dominating effects due to the deadlock resolution over the original task-related controllers, a deadlock indicator function using CBF-inspired risk measurement is proposed and encoded in the unified framework for the agents to adaptively determine when to activate the deadlock resolution. This allows the agents to follow their original control tasks and seamlessly unlock or deactivate deadlock resolution as necessary, effectively improving task efficiency. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and real-world experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_09621
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adaptive Deadlock Avoidance for Decentralized Multi-agent Systems via CBF-inspired Risk Measurement
Zhang, Yanze
Lyu, Yiwei
Jo, Siwon
Yang, Yupeng
Luo, Wenhao
Systems and Control
Robotics
Decentralized safe control plays an important role in multi-agent systems given the scalability and robustness without reliance on a central authority. However, without an explicit global coordinator, the decentralized control methods are often prone to deadlock -- a state where the system reaches equilibrium, causing the robots to stall. In this paper, we propose a generalized decentralized framework that unifies the Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) and Control Barrier Function (CBF) to facilitate efficient task execution and ensure deadlock-free trajectories for the multi-agent systems. As the agents approach the deadlock-related undesirable equilibrium, the framework can detect the equilibrium and drive agents away before that happens. This is achieved by a secondary deadlock resolution design with an auxiliary CBF to prevent the multi-agent systems from converging to the undesirable equilibrium. To avoid dominating effects due to the deadlock resolution over the original task-related controllers, a deadlock indicator function using CBF-inspired risk measurement is proposed and encoded in the unified framework for the agents to adaptively determine when to activate the deadlock resolution. This allows the agents to follow their original control tasks and seamlessly unlock or deactivate deadlock resolution as necessary, effectively improving task efficiency. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and real-world experiments.
title Adaptive Deadlock Avoidance for Decentralized Multi-agent Systems via CBF-inspired Risk Measurement
topic Systems and Control
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.09621