Average group consensus of third-order discrete-time multi-agent systems with finite subnetworks

This paper studies average group consensus of third-order discrete-time multi-agent systems in which agents in the multi-agent network form finite subgroups due to environmental differences or task allocation. Assuming that the communication topology is undirected, a novel distributed protocol is designed. By using graph theory and matrix theory as the main analysis tools, necessary and sufficient conditions and precise final states are obtained for the agents achieving the average group consensus. Finally, an example is presented to demonstrate effectiveness of the theoretical results.