Distributed consensus and tracking control of second‐order time‐varying nonlinear multi‐agent systems

In this paper, the distributed consensus and tracking protocols are developed for the second‐order time‐varying nonlinear multi‐agent systems under general directed graph. Firstly, the consensus and tracking problems can be converted into a conventional stabilization control problem. Then a state transformation is employed to deal with the time‐varying nonlinearities. By choosing an appropriate time‐varying parameter and coupling strengths, exponential consensus and tracking of second‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems can be achieved. Finally, a simulation is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus and tracking protocols. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Heterogeneous consensus of higher‐order multi‐agent systems with mismatched uncertainties using sliding mode control

A robust consensus controller is proposed for heterogeneous higher‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems, when the agent dynamics are involved with mismatched uncertainties. A distributed consensus protocol based on a time‐varying nonhomogeneous finite‐time disturbance observer and sliding mode control is designed to realize the network consensus of higher‐order multi‐agent systems. The time‐varying finite‐time disturbance observer overcomes the problem of peaking value near the initial time caused by the constant gain one and is designed to estimate the uncertainties and to mitigate the effect of mismatched uncertainties during the sliding mode. To eliminate the chattering phenomenon and ensure finite‐time convergence to the sliding surface, the control law is designed by using the super twisting algorithm. Finally numerical simulations are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Second‐order consensus for directed multi‐agent systems with sampled data

This paper deals with the consensus problem of second‐order multi‐agent systems with sampled data. Because of the unavailable velocity information, consensus problem is studied only by using the sampled position information. The final consensus states of multi‐agent system are given. And a necessary and sufficient consensus condition is provided, which depends on the parameters of sampling interval, eigenvalues of Laplacian matrix, and coupling strengths. Then, the case that both the sampled position and velocity information can be obtained is discussed. On the basis of introducing a time‐varying piecewise‐continuous delay and proposing a novel time‐dependent Lyapunov functional, the sufficient consensus condition is presented, and the upper bound of sampling interval can be estimated. Simulation examples are provided finally to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design methods. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consensus in second‐order Markovian jump multi‐agent systems via impulsive control using sampled information with heterogenous delays

This paper investigates the consensus problem of second‐order Markovian jump multi‐agent systems with delays. Both network‐induced random delay and node‐induced state delay are considered, where the network‐induced random delay, subjected to a Markov chain, exists in the switching signal and the node‐induced state delay, related to switching topologies, is heterogeneous between any two linked agents. In order to reduce communication and control energy, an impulsive protocol is proposed, where each agent only can get delayed relative positions to neighbors and the velocity of itself at impulsive instants. By performing three steps of model transformation and introducing a mapping for two independent Markov chains, the consensus problem of the original continuous‐time system is equivalent to the stability problem of a discrete‐time expand error system with two Markovian jumping parameters and a necessary and sufficient criterion is derived. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical result.@@@@This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61374171, 61572210, and 51537003, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015TS030), and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1245).     

On the general consensus protocol in multi‐agent networks with second‐order dynamics and sampled data

This paper considers the problem of the convergence of the consensus for multiple agents in a directed network. A general distributed consensus protocol is designed, the advantage of this protocol is that almost all the existing linear local interaction consensus protocols can be considered as special cases of the present paper. Necessary and sufficient conditions are established for reaching consensus of the system by choosing the appropriate sampling period, the control parameters and the spectra of the Laplacian matrix. It is found that second‐order consensus cannot be reached for a sufficiently large sampling period while it can be reached for a sufficiently small one. Furthermore, the coupling gains can be carefully designed under the given network structure and the sampling period. Finally, a simulation example is given to verify and illustrate the theoretical analysis.     

Further results on finite‐time consensus of second‐order multi‐agent systems without velocity measurements

This paper investigates the problem of finite‐time consensus (FTC) for second‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems when the velocity information is unavailable. Based on the global finite‐time stability theory and homogeneity with dilation, a class of novel finite‐time consensus protocols are proposed for the multi‐agent systems. The protocol design is divided into two parts. First, when all the state information of the agents are measurable, a new continuous state feedback is designed to achieve FTC. Then, when the velocity information is unmeasurable, two finite‐time convergent discontinuous observers are presented to estimate the velocities of the followers and the leader, respectively, which further ensure the final FTC for the multi‐agent systems. Finally, one example is given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consensus for formation control of multi‐agent systems

This study considers the formation problem for multi‐agent systems, which are described by the second‐order dynamics on nonlinear manifolds SE(2) and SE(3). In particular, the model of each agent contains information about its attitude. Using a consensus strategy, a control law is developed to guarantee that any desired formation can be achieved asymptotically under the conditions of complete or tree‐shaped communication topologies. Numerical simulations are presented to verify the theoretical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust consensus for uncertain multi‐agent systems with discrete‐time dynamics

This paper investigates robust consensus for multi‐agent systems with discrete‐time dynamics affected by uncertainty. In particular, the paper considers multi‐agent systems with single and double integrators, where the weighted adjacency matrix is a polynomial function of uncertain parameters constrained into a semialgebraic set. Firstly, necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for robust consensus based on the existence of a Lyapunov function polynomially dependent on the uncertainty. In particular, an upper bound on the degree required for achieving necessity is provided. Secondly, a necessary and sufficient condition is provided for robust consensus with single integrator and nonnegative weighted adjacency matrices based on the zeros of a polynomial. Lastly, it is shown how these conditions can be investigated through convex programming by exploiting linear matrix inequalities and sums of squares of polynomials. Some numerical examples illustrate the proposed results. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Guaranteed cost consensus for multi‐agent systems with switching topologies

Firstly, guaranteed cost consensus for multi‐agent systems is introduced based on state errors among neighboring agents and control inputs of all agents, where a tradeoff between the consensus regulation performance and the control effort is considered. Then, a sufficient condition for guaranteed cost consensus is given by the state‐space decomposition approach and the Lyapunov method, where an upper bound of the cost function is determined and an approach is proposed to determine the control gain. It is worth mentioning that the criterions for guaranteed cost consensus are only dependent on the maximum eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrices of switching topologies. Finally, numerical simulations are given to demonstrate theoretical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel consensus algorithm for second‐order multi‐agent systems without velocity measurements

In this paper, a novel consensus protocol for second‐order multi‐agent systems is elegantly designed, and it relaxes the common requirement of the velocity information of the agents. An interesting consensus criterion is explicitly derived in terms of the proposed cooperation law provided that the dynamical equation for each agent is linear. As an extension, the proposed cooperation rule is further extended to a general scenario, where the coupling weights characterizing the relationships among the neighboring agents are time‐varying. Accordingly, two distributed cooperative algorithms (node/edge‐based scheme) are explicitly designed. Moreover, we study the case of network with switching communication setting. It shows that edge‐based law is capable with the time‐varying topology, while the node‐based scheme is not. In addition, the proposed coordination strategies are applied to the tracking problem as well. Finally, these obtained consensus results are well supported in the light of the pendulum models. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Output‐feedback adaptive consensus tracking control for a class of high‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems

In this paper, an output‐feedback adaptive consensus tracking control scheme is proposed for a class of high‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems. The agents are allowed to have unknown parameters, unknown nonlinearities, and input quantization simultaneously. The desired trajectory to be tracked is available for only a subset of agents, and only the relative outputs and the quantized inputs need to be measured or transmitted as signal exchange among neighbors regardless of the system order. By introducing a kind of high‐gain K‐filters and a smooth function, the effect among agents caused by the unknown nonlinearities is successfully counteracted, and all closed‐loop signals are proved to be globally uniformly bounded. Moreover, it is shown that the tracking errors converge to a residual set that can be made arbitrarily small. Simulation results on robot manipulators are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust consensus tracking for a class of high‐order multi‐agent systems

In this paper, we study the robust consensus tracking problem for a class of high‐order multi‐agent systems with unmodelled dynamics and unknown disturbances. A continuous robust state feedback control algorithm is proposed to enable the agents to achieve robust consensus tracking of a desired trajectory. By utilizing Lyapunov analysis methods and an invariance‐like theorem, sufficient conditions for semi‐global asymptotic consensus tracking are established. A robust output feedback control algorithm is designed to obtain a uniformly ultimately bounded consensus tracking result. Numerical simulations are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed consensus of discrete‐time multi‐agent systems with multiplicative noises

In this paper, we consider the consensus problem of discrete‐time multi‐agent systems with multiplicative communication noises. Each agent can only receive information corrupted by noises from its neighbors and/or a reference node. The intensities of these noises are dependent on the relative states of agents. Under some mild assumptions of the noises and the structure of network, consensus is analyzed under a fixed topology, dynamically switching topologies and randomly switching topologies, respectively. By combining algebraic graph theory and martingale convergence theorem, sufficient conditions for mean square and almost sure consensus are given. Further, when the consensus is achieved without a reference, it is shown that the consensus point is a random variable with its expectation being the average of the initial states of the agents and its variance being bounded. If the multi‐agent system has access to the state of the reference, the state of each agent can asymptotically converge to the reference. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of our results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive robust consensus tracking for nonlinear second‐order multi‐agent systems with heterogeneous uncertainties

This paper addresses the consensus tracking problem for a class of heterogeneous nonlinear second‐order multi‐agent systems with parametric uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics, and bounded external disturbances. By linearly parameterizing the control input of the leader, two distributed adaptive robust consensus tracking control protocols with dynamic and fixed coupling gains are constructed based on the relative information from neighboring agents. The global tracking errors are shown to be guaranteed to exponentially converge to a ball with a constant radius at a prescribed rate of convergence under external disturbances. Finally, a numerical example is provided to verify the theoretical results. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite time agreement protocol design of multi‐agent systems with communication delays

In this paper, the finite‐time agreement problem of continuous‐time multi‐agent systems with communication delays is considered. First, the multi‐agent system researched in the paper is described. Second, some notations and lemmas used in the paper are given. Then, agreement protocols for continuous (but non‐smooth) multi‐agent systems are proposed, which ensure that the states of agents reach agreement in finite time. The stability analysis and simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Distributed consensus of delayed multi‐agent systems with nonlinear dynamics via intermittent control

In this paper, a distributed consensus of delayed multi‐agent systems with a leader is investigated, and a nonlinear protocol is proposed based on intermittent control. A notable feature of this protocol is to address second‐order consensus problems for delayed nonlinear multi‐agent systems, where agents can only communicate with each other over some disconnected time intervals. Some sufficient conditions to guarantee the consensus over fixed and switching topologies are derived. It is shown that second‐order consensus for delayed multi‐agent system with intermittent control can be achieved if the time delay is less than a critical value and the communication time duration is larger than a threshold value. In addition, some numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the theoretical results.     

Robust consensus tracking for a class of heterogeneous second‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems

This paper deals with the robust consensus tracking problem for a class of heterogeneous second‐order nonlinear multi‐agent systems with bounded external disturbances. First, a distributed adaptive control law is proposed based on the relative position and velocity information. It is shown that for any connected undirected communication graph, the proposed control law solves the robust consensus tracking problem. Then, by introducing a novel distributed observer and employing backstepping design techniques, a distributed adaptive control law is constructed based only on the relative position information. Compared with the existing results, the proposed adaptive consensus protocols are in a distributed fashion, and the nonlinear functions are not required to satisfy any globally Lipschitz or Lipschitz‐like condition. Numerical examples are given to verify our proposed protocols. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed node‐to‐node consensus of multi‐agent systems with stochastic sampling

This paper is concerned with the mean square node‐to‐node consensus tracking problem for multi‐agent systems with nonidentical nonlinear dynamics and directed topologies. The randomly occurred uncertainties in the sampling devices may result in stochastically varied sampling periods, which lead to the investigation of node‐to‐node consensus problem under stochastic sampling. By employing the input‐delay method and discontinuous Lyapunov functional approach, it arrives at some sufficient conditions under which the state of each follower can track that of the corresponding leader asymptotically in the mean square sense. Finally, some numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed edge event‐triggered consensus protocol of multi‐agent systems with communication buffer

This paper proposes a distributed edge event‐triggered (DEET) scheme of multi‐agent systems via a communication buffer to reduce unnecessary update of controllers induced by fast information transmission. This edge scheme avoids a synchronous phenomenon in node event‐triggered mechanism, in which the triggering of one agent activates information transmission of all edges linked with this agent. Hence, the node event‐triggered scheme leads to unnecessary update of control protocols while the DEET provides a new approach without constrains on synchronous phenomenon of edge information exchange. That is, the communication on each edge is independent with other edges. In addition, we investigate another case where edge information transmission is subject to quantization and a quantized edge event‐triggered control protocol is proposed. Note that such a quantized protocol guarantees asymptotical consensus instead of bounded consensus in most of the existing literature. Meanwhile, both DEET and quantized edge event‐triggered schemes have nontrivial properties of excluding Zeno behavior. Furthermore, an algorithm is provided to avoid continuous event detection; hence, the communication traffic of the whole network is reduced significantly. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust output consensus for a class of fractional‐order interval multi‐agent systems

This paper is devoted to the robust output consensus problem of fractional‐order interval multi‐agent systems (FOIMASs) with fixed undirected topologies, where the fractional order, the system matrix, and the input matrix are perturbed simultaneously, and there exist linear coupling relationships among the fractional order and the perturbations of the system matrix and the input matrix. According to the information of the agents' neighbors, we design a distributed output feedback protocol. A sufficient condition guaranteeing the robust output consensus of FOIMASs is derived in terms of nonlinear matrix inequalities. By the matrix transformation and the singular value decomposition, the nonlinear matrix inequalities are transformed into linear matrix inequalities, and the output feedback gain matrix is obtained. A numerical simulation example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.