Distributed Consensus of Second-Order Multi-Vehicle Systems With Heterogeneous and Unavailable Inertia Matrices

The consensus problem of second-order multi-vehicle systems with inertias in terms of a general directed network topology is studied. Rather than the current consensus algorithms for multi-vehicle systems with just scalar inertias, we allow the inertias to be matrices. What's more, the inertia matrices are assumed to be heterogeneous as well as unavailable. In particular, a fully distributed consensus algorithm is proposed such that global information is unnecessary for the achievement of the consensus objective. Moreover, a novel adaptive strategy is designed to address the dilemma arising from the heterogeneity and unavailability of the inertia matrices. It is demonstrated that, under the strongly connected graph condition, the designed distributed algorithm ensures the asymptotic convergence of the required consensus objective. The efficacy of the developed distributed algorithm is finally validated by numerical simulations.