Consensus of Multiple High-Order Integrator Agents With Time-Varying Connectivity and Delays: Protocols Using Only Relative States

The study considers the strategies for multiple high-order integrator agents to reach an agreement using local measurements and local communications over networks with time-varying connectivity and delays. Two new consensus protocols are presented using only relative states and parameterized weights in polynomial form, one for networks where the connectivity is time varying, the other for networks where connectivity and delays are both time varying. Analysis shows the ensuring of consensus as well as the weights’ existence for both protocols, provided that the network connectivity is jointly and periodically kept as scrambling or with directed spanning tree. A new analysis method, termed as block seminorm is employed in the consensus analysis, and shows less conservative in parameter validation. Finally, both numeric simulations and experiments show the proposed consensus schemes’ effectiveness.