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arXiv · 2608.30874

Provably Safe Decentralized Contingency MPC under State-Only Information and Limited Sensing for Nonlinear Multi-agent Systems

Max Studt·Georg Schildbach
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Abstract

This paper considers decentralized contingency MPC for multi-agent control under a state-only information pattern, with particular focus on limited sensing and plug-and-play operation. The objective is to retain recursive feasibility, safety, and Lyapunov-type convergence while reducing conservatism in local interaction handling. The framework relies on agent-wise fallback regions (safe sets) in which a feasible contingency maneuver to a safe equilibrium is always available. A novel safe-set update mechanism is introduced that supports less conservative decentralized interaction while preserving the underlying guarantees. This, in turn, enables memory-free local interaction and finite sensing ranges without requiring agents to reconstruct the exact neighbor geometry. The resulting scheme remains fully decentralized and preserves the shared-first-input contingency MPC structure. Theoretical guarantees and simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the approach in dense multi-agent scenarios.

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Max Studt, Georg Schildbach. 2026-08-31. Provably Safe Decentralized Contingency MPC under State-Only Information and Limited Sensing for Nonlinear Multi-agent Systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30874

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