Group consensus in multi-agent systems with hybrid protocol

This paper investigates a group consensus problem with discontinuous information transmissions among different groups of dynamic agents. In the group consensus problem, the agents reach more than one consistent state asymptotically. We consider that the communication topology of these agents, represented by a network, is undirected. Then a novel group consensus protocol, called hybrid protocol, is proposed to solve the couple-group average-consensus problem. The convergence analysis is presented and the algebraic criterions are established. Furthermore, the multi-group consensus is discussed as an extension of the couple-group consensus. By similar techniques, some analysis results are presented. The analysis tools developed in this paper are based on algebraic graph theory, matrix theory, and control theory. Finally, the simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results. (C) 2013 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.