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This work studies the behaviors of two large-population teams competing in a discrete environment. The team-level interactions are modeled as a zero-sum game while the agent dynamics within each team is formulated as a collaborative mean-field team problem. Drawing inspiration from the mean-field literature, we first approximate the large-population team game with its infinite-population limit. Subsequently, we construct a fictitious centralized system and transform the infinite-population game to an equivalent zero-sum game between two coordinators. Via a novel reachability analysis, we study the optimality of coordination strategies, which induce decentralized strategies under the original information structure. The optimality of the resulting strategies is established in the original finite-population game, and the theoretical guarantees are verified by numerical examples.

 

We propose a nonlinear hybrid dual quaternion feedback control law for multibody spacecraft-mounted robotic systems (SMRSs) pose control. Indeed, screw theory expressed via a unit dual quaternion representation and its associated algebra can be used to compactly formulate both the forward (position and velocity) kinematics and pose control of [Formula: see text]-degree-of-freedom robot manipulators. Recent works have also established the necessary theory for expressing the rigid multibody dynamics of an SMRS in dual quaternion algebra. Given the established framework for expressing both kinematics and dynamics of general [Formula: see text]-body SMRSs via dual quaternions, this paper proposes a dual quaternion control law that achieves simultaneous global asymptotically stable pose tracking for the end effector and the spacecraft base of an SMRS. The proposed hybrid control law is robust to chattering caused by noisy feedback and avoids the unwinding phenomenon innate to continuous-based (dual) quaternion controllers. Additionally, an actuator allocation technique is proposed in the neighborhood of system singularities to ensure bounded control inputs, with minimum deviation from the specified spacecraft base and end-effector trajectories during controller execution.

 

In networked control systems, the sensory signals are often quantized before being transmitted to the controller. Consequently, performance is affected by the coarseness of this quantization process. Modern communication technologies allow users to obtain resolution-varying quantized measurements based on the prices paid. In this paper, we consider the problem of joint optimal controller synthesis and quantizer scheduling for a partially observed quantized-feedback linear-quadratic-Gaussian system, where the measurements are quantized before being sent to the controller. The system is presented with several choices of quantizers, along with the cost of using each quantizer. The objective is to jointly select the quantizers and synthesize the controller to strike an optimal balance between control performance and quantization cost. When the innovation signal is quantized instead of the measurement, the problem is decoupled into two optimization problems: one for optimal controller synthesis, and the other for optimal quantizer selection. The optimal controller is found by solving a Riccati equation and the optimal quantizer-selection policy is found by solving a linear program---both of which can be solved offline. 

Missions to small celestial bodies rely heavily on optical feature tracking for characterization of and relative navigation around the target body. While deep learning has led to great advancements in feature detection and description, training and validating data-driven models for space applications is challenging due to the limited availability of large-scale, annotated datasets. This paper introduces AstroVision, a large-scale dataset comprised of 115,970 densely annotated, real images of 16 different small bodies captured during past and ongoing missions. We leverage AstroVision to develop a set of standardized benchmarks and conduct an exhaustive evaluation of both handcrafted and data-driven feature detection and description methods. Next, we employ AstroVision for end-to-end training of a state-of-the-art, deep feature detection and description network and demonstrate improved performance on multiple benchmarks. The full benchmarking pipeline and the dataset will be made publicly available to facilitate the advancement of computer vision algorithms for space applications. 

In this paper, we present a novel Model Predictive Control method for autonomous robot planning and control subject to arbitrary forms of uncertainty. The proposed Risk- Aware Model Predictive Path Integral (RA-MPPI) control utilizes the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) measure to generate optimal control actions for safety-critical robotic applications. Different from most existing Stochastic MPCs and CVaR optimization methods that linearize the original dynamics and formulate control tasks as convex programs, the proposed method directly uses the original dynamics without restricting the form of the cost functions or the noise. We apply the novel RA-MPPI controller to an autonomous vehicle to perform aggressive driving maneuvers in cluttered environments. Our simulations and experiments show that the proposed RA-MPPI controller can achieve similar lap times with the baseline MPPI controller while encountering significantly fewer collisions. The proposed controller performs online computation at an update frequency of up to 80 Hz, utilizing modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to multi-thread the generation of trajectories as well as the CVaR values. 

Sampling-based algorithms solve the path planning problem by generating random samples in the search space and incrementally growing a connectivity graph or a tree. Conventionally, the sampling strategy used in these algorithms is biased towards exploration to acquire information about the search-space. In contrast, this work proposes an optimization-based procedure that generates new samples so as to improve the cost-to-come value of vertices in a given neighborhood. The application of the proposed algorithm adds an exploitative bias to sampling and results in a faster convergence1 to the optimal solution compared to other state-of-the-art sampling techniques. This is demonstrated using benchmarking experiments performed for 7 DOF Panda and 14 DOF Baxter robots. 

Space-mounted robotics is becoming increasingly mainstream for many space missions. The aim of this article is threefold: first, to give a broad and quick overview of the importance of spacecraft-mounted robotics for future in-orbit servicing missions; second, to review the basic current approaches for modeling and control of spacecraft-mounted robotic systems; and third, to introduce some new developments in terms of modeling and control of spacecraft-mounted robotic manipulators using the language of hypercomplex numbers (dual quaternions). Some outstanding research questions and potential future directions in the field are also discussed.