Synchronized path following for LTI systems and closed paths: Laboratory implementation

This paper examines a synchronized path following control design problem for a collection of homogenous, minimum phase, linear time-invariant systems assigned closed curves in their output space. In the first part of the paper we define a path following normal form for LTI systems. We isolate the role that the zero dynamics play in determining the feasibility of using the path following normal form for control design. In the second part of the paper we leverage recent results from the literature on synchronizing LTI systems to develop synchronizing controllers. The main result is a distributed feedback law that drives all the agents to their respective paths and ensures path invariance while simultaneously synchronizing their positions along the path. Laboratory results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.