Barrier Function-based Distributed Symbolic Controller for Multi-Agent Systems

Because of the scalability issues associated with the symbolic controller synthesis approach, employing it in a multi-agent system (MAS) framework becomes difficult. In this paper, we present a novel approach for synthesizing distributed symbolic controllers for MAS, that enforces a local Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) specification on each agent and global safety specifications on the MAS, in a computationally efficient manner by leveraging the concept of control barrier functions (CBF). In addition, we also provide an analysis on the effect of the CBF parameters on the conservatism introduced by our proposed approach in the size and domain of the synthesized controller. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through a comparison with the conventional monolithic symbolic control, using simulation as well as hardware demonstrations.