On zero-vibration signal shapers and a wave-absorbing controller for a chain of multi-agent dynamical systems

The paper brings together two different approaches for control of chain of oscillatory lumped-parameter multi-agent systems. Namely, the multi-mode zero-vibration input shaper and the wave-absorbing controller are recalled and the similarities and links between them are broadly discussed. The special case of identical agents with a double-integrator character is at the focus throughout the paper. The report reveals that the two approaches are closely related in spite of the fact that they differ significantly in all aspects, from motivation through computational algorithms to target implementation. In addition, the presented numerical results, mostly based on numerical simulations at this moment, show that the two methods can be combined together, to take advantage of both an appropriate initial excitation of the system by the input shaper and of increased robustness coming from the wave-absorber feedback architecture. Such a combined control law is based on a special property of the multi-mode zero vibration input shaper - namely the convergence of its impulse response, as the number of agents increases, to a double bell-shaped function.