Second-order group consensus for multi-agent systems with time delays

This paper studies the group consensus problem of second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with time delays. First, by state transformation method, the group consensus problem of multi-agent systems can be equivalently transformed into the asymptotical stability of a time-delay system. Then, by Lyapunov first method and Hopf bifurcation theory, respectively, we aim to find the upper bound of time delay tau* such that the multi-agent systems can achieve group consensus for tau is an element of [0, tau*). Finally, simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of our theoretical analysis. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.