ABSTRACT
This chapter sets forth the stage for one of the most important issues in system of systems (SoS)—the control problem. The challenge for any control engineer and designer is to stabilize the SoS based not only on its own onboard sensors, but also on data transmissions from other sensors and actuators. The chapter discusses the two decentralized schemes following Kumar Ray et al.—one is the decentralized control of a group of rovers, whereas the second one is the decentralized formation control of a system of rovers. In the case of implementing consensus-based control paradigm for a set of underwater and simulated robots, one needs to know where the rovers are and which way they are facing. Cooperative control of an SoS assumes that it can be characterized by a set of interconnected systems or agents with a common goal. A control system where a real-time communication network is in the feedback path is called a network control system (NCS).
