Controllability of switching networks of multi‐agent systems

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper addresses the controllability of a switching network of multi‐agent systems with a leader obeying nearest‐neighbor communication rules. The leader is a particular agent acting as an external input to control other member agents. Some computationally efficient sufficient conditions for such multi‐agent systems to be controllable are derived. The results show that a multi‐agent system can be controllable even if each of its subsystem is not controllable, by appropriately selecting one of the agents as the leader and suitably designing the neighbor‐interaction rules via a switching topology. The fixed topology case is analyzed and new controllability conditions and formula of inputs for the desired formation of the network are presented. The controllability of a switching network of multi‐agent systems in the presence of communication delay is also investigated. Examples with numerical simulations are given to illustrate the theoretical results. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Controllability of discrete‐time multiagent systems with switching topology

“…For example, we develop the flag union graph and the flag distance in the proof of Theorem 2. Compared with the existing literature,() it is shown that our results are applicable to systems with arbitrary switching directed topology rather than directed fixed topology. Specifically, we show that our results are valid for arbitrary coupling weights.…”

“…A natural framework to study the time variance of communication topology is through switched systems. In other works,() some algebraic conditions were proposed for the controllability of multiagent systems with switching topology. In the works of Liu et al,() the authors proved that the controllability of the overall system does not depend on that of each subsystem.…”

“…In other works,() some algebraic conditions were proposed for the controllability of multiagent systems with switching topology. In the works of Liu et al,() the authors proved that the controllability of the overall system does not depend on that of each subsystem. In the works of Liu et al,() the structural controllability problem of switched linear systems was respectively addressed if there is no nonaccessible node in its union graph and the union graph is connected.…”

“…The proposed results can also be extended to computing the lower and upper bounds for the union graph without nonaccessible nodes, which are obviously different from the existing works. () ii.To further investigate the controllability with switching topology, we develop some new methods to solve the difficulties encountered in our paper.…”

Controllability of multi‐agent systems under directed topology

“…Especially, tree graph was studied in , and necessary and sufficient conditions were proposed in terms of downer branch and subgraphs to characterize controllability. In addition, there are some other relevant results, for example, results on controllability were derived with respect to protocols design , heterogeneous dynamics , identification of topology structures , switching topology , time‐delay and structural controllability , and so on.…”