r‐consensus control for higher‐order multi‐agent systems with digraph

This paper studies a consensus problem for lth (l ≥ 2) order multi‐agent systems with digraph, namely, for a fixed r (0 ≤ r ≤ l ? 1), the rth derivative of the states x_i of agents are convergent to a constant value and, for every k (0 ≤ k ≤ l ? 1), are convergent to zeros. A new concept of r‐consensus is introduced and new consensus protocols are proposed for solving such an r‐consensus problem. A sufficient and necessary condition for r‐consensus is obtained. As special cases, criteria for third‐order systems are given, in which the exact relationship between feedback gains is established. Finally, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of these protocols.