access icon free Consensus controllers for general integrator multi-agent systems: analysis, design and application to autonomous surface vessels

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 06/07/2017, Accepted 11/12/2017, Revised 17/11/2017, Published 12/12/2017

This study addresses the distributed and consensus control problems for multi-agent systems with general integrator dynamics and undirected topology. First, based on the frequency domain description of linear multi-agent systems, a sufficient and necessary condition is imposed on each controller to achieve consensus. Second, both and optimal controllers are computed analytically according to the corresponding performance indices. The novel controllers not only can optimise the reference tracking performance but also has a simple tuning way to trade off the nominal performance and robustness. Finally, by application to the formation control of autonomous surface vessels shows the effectiveness of the proposed two control strategies.

Inspec keywords: control system synthesis; H2 control; graph theory; distributed control; multi-agent systems; frequency-domain analysis; H∞ control; performance index; autonomous underwater vehicles; linear systems

Other keywords: sufficient condition; general integrator multiagent systems; performance indices; general integrator dynamics; autonomous surface vessels; undirected topology; distributed H∞ consensus control problems; reference tracking performance; H2 optimal controllers; necessary condition; H2 consensus control problems; frequency domain description; linear multiagent systems; H∞ optimal controllers

Subjects: Linear control systems; Mathematical analysis; Combinatorial mathematics; Optimal control; Multivariable control systems; Control system analysis and synthesis methods

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