Reaching global leaderless consensus in directed networks via smooth and bounded control

This short communication revisits the leaderless consensus problem in directed networks. The network topology is described by a general directed graph which is only needed to contain at least a directed spanning tree, and is not necessarily strongly connected. A bounded and smooth control law using the hyperbolic tangent function is developed as the consensus protocol. Explicit stability analysis based on Lyapunov's second method and the concept of condensation graph is given. The proposed approach transforms the leaderless consensus problem into two subproblems: reaching leader-following consensus under a graph containing a directed spanning tree with the leader being the root node and reaching leaderless consensus under a strongly connected graph. Remarkably, a perturbed system is formulated as the bridge between these two subproblems which are solved by Lyapunov's second method. The global leaderless consensus is achieved based on the stability of the perturbed system. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Novel distributed robust adaptive consensus protocols for linear multi-agent systems with directed graphs and external disturbances

This paper addresses the distributed consensus protocol design problem for linear multi-agent systems with directed graphs and external unmatched disturbances. Novel distributed adaptive consensus protocols are proposed to achieve leader–follower consensus for any directed graph containing a directed spanning tree with the leader as the root node and leaderless consensus for strongly connected directed graphs. It is pointed out that the adaptive protocols involve undesirable parameter drift phenomenon when bounded external disturbances exist. By using the σ modification technique, distributed robust adaptive consensus protocols are designed to guarantee the ultimate boundedness of both the consensus error and the adaptive coupling weights in the presence of external disturbances. All the adaptive protocols in this paper are fully distributed, relying on only the agent dynamics and the relative states of neighbouring agents.     

速度不可测的异构多智能体系统一致性分析

近年来,随着异构系统在实际中的广泛应用,异构多智能体系统一致性分析成为研究热点。针对一阶部分智能体控制输入有界、二阶智能体速度不可测的异构多智能体系统,在无向网络拓扑图下给出了无领导者和有领导者两种控制输入设计方法,基于图论知识和LaSalle不变集原理给出了该异构系统实现一致性的充分条件。最后,通过数值仿真验证了该理论的正确性。     

Distributed output feedback stationary consensus of multi-vehicle systems in unknown environments

In the traditional distributed consensus of multi-vehicle systems, vehicles agree on velocity and position using limited information exchange in their local neighborhoods. Recently, distributed leaderless stationary consensus has been proposed in which vehicles agree on a position and come to a stop. The proposed stationary consensus schemes are based on all vehicles'' access to their own absolute velocity measurements, and they do not guarantee this collective behavior in the presence of disturbances that persistently excite vehicles'' dynamics. On the other hand, traditional distributed disturbance rejection leaderless consensus algorithms may result in an uncontrolled increase in the speed of multi-vehicle system. In this paper, we propose a dynamic relative-output feedback leaderless stationary algorithm in which only a few vehicles have access to their absolute measurements. We systematically design the distributed algorithm by transforming this problem into a static feedback robust control design challenge for the low-order modified model of vehicles with fictitious modeling uncertainties. We further propose dynamic leader-follower stationary consensus algorithms for multi-vehicle systems with a static leader, and find closed-form solutions for the consensus gains based on design matrices and communication graph topology. Finally, we verify the feasibility of these ideas through simulation studies.     

Leaderless consensus for the fractional-order nonlinear multi-agent systems under directed interaction topology

Leaderless consensus for the fractional-order nonlinear multi-agent systems is investigated in this paper. At the first part, a control protocol is proposed to achieve leaderless consensus for the nonlinear single-integrator multi-agent systems. At the second part, based on sliding mode estimator, a control protocol is given to solve leaderless consensus for the the nonlinear single-integrator multi-agent systems. It shows that the control protocol can improve the systems’ convergence speed. At the third part, a control protocol is designed to accomplish leaderless consensus for the nonlinear double-integrator multi-agent systems. To judge the systems’ stability in this paper, two classic continuous Lyapunov candidate functions are chosen. Finally, several worked out examples under directed interaction topology are given to prove above results.     

输入与速度饱和的异构多智能体系统的一致性

针对由一阶与二阶智能体构成的异构多智能体系统具有输入和速度饱和特性,系统无法达到一致性的问题,构建了无领航者和有领航者的异构多智能体分布式控制器,并给出了系统达到一致性的充分条件。通过Lyapunov稳定性理论和Lasalle不变集原理推导出了系统稳定性的充分条件,并以此计算出了通信增益的取值范围。对具有输入和速度饱和特性的无领航者异构多智能体系统进行数值仿真,结果显示,当选取的通信增益不在合适的范围内时,无领航者的异构多智能体系统无法实现一致性;而通过提出的增益选取方法选取通信增益时,异构多智能体系统可以克服输入和速度的饱和特性,进而实现异构多智能体系统的半全局一致性。对具有输入和速度饱和特性的领航跟随异构多智能体系统进行数值仿真的结果则证明了通信增益的计算方法也适用于异构多智能体系统的半全局领航跟随一致性控制。     

Order-Preserved Preset-Time Cooperative Control: A Monotone System-Based Approach

This paper is concerned with order-preserved preset-time cooperative control of multi-agent systems with directed graphs. A novel monotone system-based approach is proposed to preserve the initial order of agents while guaranteeing the preset-time state agreement. Specifically, three different distributed controllers together with sufficient conditions are designed to realize leaderless consensus, leader-following consensus, and containment control, respectively. The proposed controllers facilitate preset-time deployment of agents in practical scenarios with collision avoidance requirement. Comparison studies through a numerical example are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.      

Leader-following scaled consensus of second-order multi-agent systems under directed topologies

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the leader-following scaled consensus problem of second-order multi-agent systems under directed topologies. Three novel leader-following scaled consensus protocols are designed. First, a novel scaled consensus protocol is proposed. It can guarantee the velocity of each agent in one sub-group exactly follow that of a leader, and the follower agents achieve scaled consensus. Second, another proposed protocol enables the agents' positions and velocities of one sub-group accurately track those of a leader, and the follower agents achieve scaled consensus. Third, consider the case where the leader's states available to one or multiple followers and the leader travels with a varying velocity, a novel scaled consensus tracking protocol is proposed. Sufficient and necessary conditions are obtained to guarantee scaled consensus tracking for the three cases,respectively. Finally, simulation examples are made to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

线性和非线性动态异构多自主体系统的有限时间一致性

研究了由线性和非线性动态自主体组成的异构多自主体系统的有限时间一致性问题.针对该异构系统提出了非线性的一致性协议,并分别给出了无领航者和有领航者情形下异构系统在有限时间内实现一致性的充分条件.所得结果还推广到具有有向通信拓扑且满足细致平衡条件的多自主体系统情形.最后,给出一些仿真结果来验证所得结论的正确性和有效性.     

线性和非线性动态异构多自主体系统的有限时间一致性（英文）

In this paper, the finite-time consensus problems of heterogeneous multi-agent systems composed of both linear and nonlinear dynamics agents are investigated. Nonlinear consensus protocols are proposed for the heterogeneous multi-agent systems.Some sufficient conditions for the finite-time consensus are established in the leaderless and leader-following cases. The results are also extended to the case where the communication topology is directed and satisfies a detailed balance condition on coupling weights.At last, some simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.     

基于能量整形方案实现具有通讯时滞欠驱动Euler-Lagrange网络的一致性

本文主要基于能量整形方案研究具有通讯时滞网络化欠驱动Euler-Lagrange (EL)系统的一致性问题,通过利用阻尼注入和互连分配的无源控制(PBC)技术,在有向连通网络拓扑下提出了一个简单的分布式协议,来实现在无引导者和有引导者-跟随者两种情形下欠驱动EL网络的一致性. 本文提出的一致性能量整形方案的主要特点是有机地整合了系统欠驱动和驱动部分以及控制器三部分能量作为整个系统的总能量,这个总能量被利用作为一个合适的Lyapunov函数,它能够充分确保网络化欠驱动EL系统达到所期望的分布式一致性. 最后,通过由欠驱动EL网络所描述柔性关节机械臂系统的数值模拟,来分析通讯时滞对一致性的效应和验证所提出控制算法的正确性.     

Consensus of multiple second-order vehicles with a time-varying reference signal under directed topology

This paper investigates two kinds of different consensus strategies for multi-vehicle systems with a time-varying reference velocity under directed communication topology, where the systems are modeled by double-integrator dynamics. For the fixed communication topology case, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for all the vehicles with reference velocity to reach consensus by the use of a new graphic methodology. We then extend this method to deal with the general case, that is, both the communication topologies and weighting factors are dynamically changing. In particular, it is shown that all the vehicles can reach consensus even though the dynamically changing interaction topology may not have a globally reachable node.     

Adaptive task-space synchronisation of networked robotic agents without task-space velocity measurements

In this paper, we investigate the problem of task-space synchronisation of multiple robotic agents in the presence of uncertain kinematics and dynamics. Our control objective is to realise synchronisation without the measurements of task-space velocity. The communication topology is assumed to be directed graphs containing a spanning tree. A decentralised task-space observer with kinematic parameter updating is proposed to avoid the reliance of task-space velocity. Based on the observer, we propose the distributed adaptive synchronisation controller for two cases: (1) the leaderless consensus case and (2) the leader-follower case, where all the followers track the convex hull spanned by the virtual leaders and for each follower, it is required that there exists at least one leader that has a directed path to the follower. The asymptotic synchronisation is proved with Lyapunov analysis and input–output stability analysis tools. Simulations with multiple robotic agents are performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.     

Interval consensus problem of multi-agent systems in accordance with switching protocol

In this paper, we discuss the interval consensus problem of multi-agent systems by providing a special Laplacian of directed graphs. As one of the most important issues in the coordination control of multi-agent systems, the consensus problem requires that the output of several spatially distributed agents reach a common value that depends on the states of all agents. For the given consensus protocol and initial states, a fixed consensus value is obtained. The resulting consensus value, however, may not be ideal or meet the quality that we require from the multi-agent system. In this paper, by introducing two state-dependent switching parameters into the consensus protocol, the system given by the proposed protocol can globally asymptotically converge to a designated point on a special closed and bounded interval. In other words, the system given by the proposed protocol can globally asymptotically reach interval consensus and then the system can also achieve a generalised interval average consensus if the directed graph is balanced. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.     

Leader-following consensus for a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems

This paper deals with the leader-following consensus problem for a class of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics and directed communication topology. The control input of the leader agent is assumed to be unknown to all follower agents. A distributed adaptive nonlinear control law is constructed using the relative state information between neighboring agents, which achieves leader-following consensus for any directed communication graph that contains a spanning tree with the root node being the leader agent. Compared with previous results, the nonlinear functions are not required to satisfy the globally Lipschitz or Lipschitz-like condition and the adaptive consensus protocol is in a distributed fashion. A numerical example is given to verify our proposed protocol.     

Quantized consensus over directed networks with switching topologies

This paper studies the quantized consensus problem for a group of agents over directed networks with switching topologies. We propose an effective distributed protocol with an adaptive finite-level uniform quantized strategy, under which consensus among agents is guaranteed with weaker communication conditions. In particular, we analytically prove that each agent sending 5-level quantized information to each of its neighbors, together with 3-level quantized information to itself at each time step, which suffices for attaining consensus with an exponential convergence rate as long as the duration of all link failures in the directed network is bounded. By dropping the typical common left eigenvector requirement for the existence of common quadratic Lyapunov function, we conduct the convergence analysis based on the notion of input-to-output stability. The proposed quantized protocol has favorable merits of requiring little communication overhead and increasing robustness to link unreliability, and it fits well into the digital network framework.     

Mean square average-consensus under measurement noises and fixed topologies: Necessary and sufficient conditions

In this paper, average-consensus control is considered for networks of continuous-time integrator agents under fixed and directed topologies. The control input of each agent can only use its local state and the states of its neighbors corrupted by white noises. To attenuate the measurement noises, time-varying consensus gains are introduced in the consensus protocol. By combining the tools of algebraic graph theory and stochastic analysis, the convergence of these kinds of protocols is analyzed. Firstly, for noise-free cases, necessary and sufficient conditions are given on the network topology and consensus gains to achieve average-consensus. Secondly, for the cases with measurement noises, necessary and sufficient conditions are given on the consensus gains to achieve asymptotic unbiased mean square average-consensus. It is shown that under the protocol designed, all agents’ states converge to a common Gaussian random variable, whose mathematical expectation is just the average of the initial states.     

Consensus of networked multi-agent systems with communication delays based on the networked predictive control scheme

The consensus problem of discrete-time networked multi-agent systems (NMASs) with a communication delay is investigated in this article, where the dynamics of agents described by discrete-time linear time-invariant systems can be either uniform or non-uniform. For the NMASs with a directed topology and constant delay, a novel protocol based on the networked predictive control scheme is proposed to compensate for communication delay actively. Using algebraic graph theories and matrix theories, necessary and/or sufficient conditions of achieving consensus are obtained, which indicates that, under the proposed protocol, the consensus is independent of the network delay and only dominated by agents' dynamics and communication topology. Meanwhile, the protocol design and consensus analysis are also presented in the case of no network delay. Simulation results are further presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of theoretical results.     

无速度输入多智能体系统的一致性

本文研究了有无引导者的多智能体系统在非线性协议下的一致性问题.当智能体速度信息无法获知时,分别针对有无引导者的多智能体系统设计了包含辅助系统和智能体相对位移信息的非线性分布式协议.借助图论、Lyapunov稳定性理论、Barbalat引理等方法,推导出有无引导者的多智能体系统在连通无向通讯网络中实现一致的充分条件,其次,设计了一种新的能使引导–追随者多智能体系统在有向通讯网络中实现期望一致的协议.最后,数值仿真验证了结果的正确性.     

Stochastic consensus of double-integrator leader-following multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time delays

This paper studies a leader-following consensus problem of continuous-time double-integrator multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time-varying communication delays under directed topology. By utilising the neighbour position and velocity information, which are delayed and disturbed by measurement noises whose intensities are considered a function related to the neighbour position and velocity of agents, a distributed consensus protocol is presented, sufficient conditions of the tracking consensus in the sense of mean square are derived. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed consensus protocol is proved by some simulations.