ISR/ECE alumni collaborate on control paper published in PRS-A

Two ISR/ECE alumni have collaborated on a paper newly published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Kevin Galloway (EE Ph.D. 2011) and Biswadip Dey (EE Ph.D. 2015) co-wrote the paper, "Beacon-referenced pursuit for collective motion in three dimensions," published on Feb. 12, 2020. They introduce a decentralized control mechanism to guide steering control of autonomous agents maneuvering among multiple moving and stationary entities in a three-dimensional environment.

Galloway is an associate professor at the United States Naval Academy, where he is on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dey is a research scientist at Siemens in Princeton, N.J. Both alumni were advised by Professor P. S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) and conducted research in the Intelligent Servosystems Laboratory.

Their control law is a modification of the three-dimensional constant bearing (CB) pursuit law that provides a way to allocate simultaneous attention to multiple entities. Galloway and Dey investigate the behavior of the closed-loop dynamics for a system with one agent referencing two beacons, as well as a two-agent mutual pursuit system wherein each agent employs the beacon-referenced CB pursuit law with regards to the other agent and a stationary beacon. They demonstrate that under certain assumptions on the associated control parameters this problem admits circling equilibria with agents moving on circular orbits with a common radius, in planes perpendicular to a common axis passing through the beacons. As the common radius and distances from the beacon are determined by the choice of parameters in the pursuit law, their approach provides a means to engineer desired formations in a three-dimensional setting.

Published May 6, 2020