Search

This technical note investigates the positive consensus problem of multiagent systems with directed communication topologies, where all the agents have identical continuous-time positive linear dynamics. Existing works of such a problem mainly focus on the case, where networked communication topologies are of either undirected and incomplete graphs, or strongly connected directed graphs. In contrast to them, we study this problem in which the communication topologies of the multiagent system are described by directed graphs each containing a spanning tree, which is a more general and new scenario due to the interplay between the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix and the controller gains. Based on the existing results in spectral graph theory and positive linear systems theory, several necessary, and sufficient conditions on positive consensus of the directed multiagent system are derived through using linear matrix inequality techniques. A primal-dual iterative algorithm is developed for the computation of solutions. Finally, several numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work deals with the analysis and protocol design problems of finite-time consensus for multi-agent systems on signed and directed networks. A new distributed protocol with two reciprocal fractional power feedbacks of local consensus error has been proposed to remove the influence of initial states on the consensus time. By introducing a well-structured Lyapunov function, the technical difficulty arising from the asymmetrical Laplacian matrices of directed graphs is circumvented. Furthermore, it is shown that the feasibility of this proposed protocol can be extended to directed graphs with a spanning tree by mathematical induction method. The upper bounds of the finite-time periods are given under the circumstances of directed networks with a spanning tree apart from the strongly-connected ones. This new protocol is then extended to the application of finite-time bipartite formation control of multi-agent systems. Simulations and experiments of bipartite formation of multiple nano-quadcopters are implemented to prove the validity and practicability of this new protocol. In the experiment, a novel fuzzy logic is also introduced to realize the group collision avoidance of all nano-quadcopters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]