Bounded Consensus Tracking of Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems Under Digraphs With Diverse Communication and Input...

Area of Science:

• Control Theory
• Robotics
• Networked Systems

Background:

• Multiagent systems face challenges in achieving consensus tracking due to heterogeneous agent dynamics and communication delays.
• Ensuring bounded tracking performance is critical, especially when only a subset of agents has access to the desired trajectory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust consensus tracking protocol for heterogeneous multiagent systems with diverse communication and input delays.
• To ensure bounded tracking errors even when the desired trajectory's acceleration is unknown to all agents.

Main Methods:

• A novel protocol combining a consensus-based trajectory estimator with a tracking controller for each agent.
• Designing estimators as coupled single integrators to estimate trajectory states (acceleration, velocity, position).
• Decoupling estimator and controller gains based on individual agent communication and input delays.

Main Results:

• The proposed strategy achieves bounded consensus tracking for heterogeneous agents despite varying delays.
• Estimator gains depend solely on communication delays, and controller gains on input delays.
• Tracking errors remain bounded, validating the algorithm's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The developed consensus tracking algorithm effectively manages heterogeneous agent dynamics and communication/input delays.
• The decoupling approach simplifies gain tuning and enhances robustness.
• Simulation results confirm the algorithm's capability to achieve bounded consensus tracking.