Research on the Transformation of Control Protocols among Three Kinds of Cooperative Control for Multi-agent Systems

In this paper, the transformation of control protocols is researched among three kinds of cooperative control (consensus with no leader, tracking control with one leader, containment control with multiple leaders) for multi-agent systems. By the extension of local neighborhood synchronization error, the consensus problem, the tracking problem, and the containment problem are converted to the stability problem of the extended local neighborhood synchronization error. Some results of protocols transformation are present. The main contribution of this paper is not the design of a control protocol, but the result about the transformation of control protocols among consensus, tracking, and containment control, resulting to the cost reduction of the design of another control protocol.