Event-driven receding horizon control for distributed persistent monitoring in network systems

We address the multi-agent persistent monitoring problem defined on a set of nodes (targets) interconnected over a network topology. A measure of mean overall node state uncertainty evaluated over a finite period is to be minimized by controlling the motion of a cooperating team of agents. To address this problem, we propose an event-driven receding horizon control approach that is computationally efficient, distributed and on-line. The proposed controller differs from the existing on-line gradient-based parametric controllers and off-line greedy cycle search methods that often lead to either low-performing local optima or computationally intensive centralized solutions. A critical novel element in this controller is that it automatically optimizes its planning horizon length, thus making it parameter-free. We show that explicit globally optimal solutions can be obtained for every distributed optimization problem encountered at each event where the receding horizon controller is invoked. Numerical results are provided showing improvements compared to state of the art distributed on-line parametric control solutions.