Leader Selection via the Manipulability of Leader-Follower Networks

In this paper, we address the problem of selecting leaders in a network by investigating how much instantaneous impact the leaders have on the remaining agents. As a measurement of the influence of leaders' inputs, we exploit the notion of manipulability, which is recently developed for leader-follower networks driven by a state-dependent weighted consensus equation. This paper first extends the manipulability index in order to measure the influence of leaders' inputs on the network centroid. We then demonstrate in simulation how the manipulability index is suitable for selecting effective leaders.