Leader-following consensus of multi-agent systems with switching topologies and time-delays

This paper investigates the leader-following consensus problem of multi-agent systems where the leader is static and the controlling effect of each follower depends on its own state. The control protocols are proposed for two cases: i) for network with switching topologies and undirected information flow; ii) for network with directed information flow and communication time-delays. With the aid of several tools from algebraic graph, matrix theory and stability theory, the sufficient conditions guaranteeing leader-following consensus are obtained by constructing appropriate Lyapunov functions. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results. © 2013 South China University of Technology, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.