Impact of Time Delays on Networked Control of Autonomous Systems

Large scale autonomous systems comprised of closed-loop networked subsystems need new scalable communication, control and computation techniques to interact with humans. In order to be stable and work efficiently, these systems need to have a feed-back loop which considers the networked communication. In this chapter (1) a control system to perform simulated experiments incorporating practical delays and the effects encountered when the subsystems communicate amongst each other is modeled. The simulations show the effects of time delays and the resulting instability from large delays. (2) The time delay systems (TDS) are modeled for both communication and computation in a system of multiple heterogeneous vehicles. (3) Open problems in the delay systems although mostly in the linear space, decentralized control framework for networked control systems has been researched. (4) Finally, an input observer based system for networked control system is reviewed