Measurement Scheduling for Control Invariance in Networked Control Systems

We discuss a new reachability problem for networked controlled system where a master node - the controller - broadcasts commands to a set of slave nodes, which must take turn to relay back state measurements. This problem finds applications in some robotics and intelligent transportation systems setups. Constraints on communication demand a coupled design of the controller and the measurement schedule. We prove that the problem is formally equivalent to the Pinwheel Problem from scheduling theory, and building on this result we provide conditions for schedulability and reachability. The results are illustrated in three numerical examples.