  We propose a distributed optimization method for solving a distributed model
predictive consensus problem. The goal is to design a distributed controller
for a network of dynamical systems to optimize a coupled objective function
while respecting state and input constraints. The distributed optimization
method is an augmented Lagrangian method called the Alternating Direction
Method of Multipliers (ADMM), which was introduced in the 1970s but has seen a
recent resurgence in the context of dramatic increases in computing power and
the development of widely available distributed computing platforms. The method
is applied to position and velocity consensus in a network of double
integrators. We find that a few tens of ADMM iterations yield closed-loop
performance near what is achieved by solving the optimization problem
centrally. Furthermore, the use of recent code generation techniques for
solving local subproblems yields fast overall computation times.
