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Average consensus seeking of high-order continuous-time multi-agent systems with multiple time-varying communication delays

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Abstract

The average consensus problem of high-order multi-agent systems with multiple time-varying communication delays is investigated in this paper. By using the idea of state decomposition, the condition for guaranteeing average consensus is converted into verifying the stability of zero equilibrium of disagreement system. Considering multiple time-varying communication delays, Lyapunov-Krasovskii approach in time-domain is employed to analyze the stability of zero equilibrium. With the help of Free-weighting Matrices (FWM) approach, the tolerant upper bounds on communication delays can be obtained through solving feasible linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Delay-dependent stability criteria for both strongly-connected fixed and switching topologies are provided in the main results. Further, the conclusion is extended to the case of jointly-connected switching topologies. Numerical examples and simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and the benefit on reducing conservativeness of the proposed method.

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Correspondence to Qingjie Zhang.

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Recommended by Editorial Board member Yoshito Ohta under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi.

This work was supported by the National Ministry Research Programs (Grant No. A2820080247) and 973 Programs (Grant No. 6138101001). Many thanks go to anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and suggestions. Moreover, the authors would like to thank Dr. T. J. Hu for the discussion about the modifications of this paper.

Qingjie Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation in National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in China. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Northeastern University (NEU) and NUDT, China, in 2004 and 2006, respectively. His current research interests include distributed consensus and multivehicle cooperative control.

Yifeng Niu is a Lecture of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation in NUDT in China. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from NUDT, China, in 2001 and 2007, respectively. His current research interests include autonomous and cooperative control and image fusion.

Lin Wang is a Ph.D. candidate of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation in NUDT in China. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from NUDT in 2003 and 2005, respectively. His current research interests include consensus estimation and multi-vehicle cooperative control.

Lincheng Shen is a Professor of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation in NUDT in China. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from NUDT in 1986, 1989 and 1994, respectively. In 1989, he joined the faculty of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, NUDT, China. Since 2010, he is the vice dean of Graduate School of NUDT. His research interests include mission planning, SAR image processing, biomimetic robotics, automation and control engineering. He has published over 100 technical papers in refereed international journals and academic conferences.

Huayong Zhu is an Associate professor of College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation in NUDT in China. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from NUDT in 1994, 1996 and 2001, respectively. His research interests include mission planning, intelligent system, information fusion, automation and control engineering.

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Zhang, Q., Niu, Y., Wang, L. et al. Average consensus seeking of high-order continuous-time multi-agent systems with multiple time-varying communication delays. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 9, 1209–1218 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-011-0623-3

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