Group consensus of multi-agent systems with reference states via pinning control

This article investigates the group consensus via pinning control for continuous-time first-order and second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with reference states. For the group consensus of first-order MASs, the dependence between the agent's state and the control input is considered. For second-order MASs, group consensus control without the velocity information of agents is considered. Instead, the virtual velocity estimation controller is designed. Meanwhile, for the designed control protocols, not only under fixed topology, but also under switching topology are considered. It is demonstrated that group consensus could be obtained under the proposed control protocols by using graph theory and stability theory. Finally, a series of numerical examples are provided to verify the control performance of the propounded control protocols.