Consensus of Homogeneous Agents with General Linear Dynamics under Switching Communication Networks

This work addresses the synchronization/consensus problem of identical multi-agent system (MAS) where the agents' dynamics are linear and the communication network is arbitrarily switching among connected topologies. The approach uses a gain matrix of a special structure in a dynamic compensator for each agent. Under reasonable conditions, the approach ensures that consensus is reached when the gain is sufficiently large. This result holds for general linear systems including the case where agents have repeated unstable eigenvalues. The proposed controller structure can be seen as a special case of the existing MAS controller structures but offers consensus conditions that are simpler than existing results, especially for the case when the network is switching among connected graphs. The works shows its application to three communication settings: fixed graph, switching among undirected and connected graphs and switching among directed and connected graphs. An example is provided to illustrate the results

Distributed Consensus of Linear Multi-Agent Systems with Switching Directed Topologies

This paper addresses the distributed consensus problem for a linear multi-agent system with switching directed communication topologies. By appropriately introducing a linear transformation, the consensus problem is equivalently converted to a stabilization problem for a class of switched linear systems. Some sufficient consensus conditions are then derived by using tools from the matrix theory and stability analysis of switched systems. It is proved that consensus in such a multi-agent system can be ensured if each agent is stabilizable and each possible directed topology contains a directed spanning tree. Finally, a numerical simulation is given for illustration.Comment: The paper will be presented at the 2014 Australian Control Conference (AUCC 2014), Canberra, Australi

A new framework for consensus for discrete-time directed networks of multi-agents with distributed delays

Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & FrancisIn this article, the distributed consensus problem is considered for discrete-time delayed networks of dynamic agents with fixed topologies, where the networks under investigation are directed and the time-delays involved are distributed time delays including a single or multiple time delay(s) as special cases. By using the invariance principle of delay difference systems, a new unified framework is established to deal with the consensus for the discrete-time delayed multi-agent system. It is shown that the addressed discrete-time network with arbitrary distributed time delays reaches consensus provided that it is strongly connected. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the proposed methods.This work was supported in part by City University of Hong Kong under Grant 7008114, the Royal Society of the UK, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 60774073 and 61074129, and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China under Grant BK2010313