Cucker-Smale Flocking Control of Leader-Follower Multiagent Systems with Intermittent Communication

Abstract

This paper investigates the Cucker-Smale flocking control problem of leader-follower multiagent systems in the presence of periodic intermittent communication, in which networked agents update the states by communicating with their neighbors during active periods and remain stable during dormancy periods. A distributed update algorithm that relies on the position error between agents is designed. Based on this algorithm, the problem of Cucker-Smale flocking with periodic intermittent communication is first transformed into a convergence problem of infinite products of nonnegative matrices. Then, this convergence problem is theoretically solved by using hybrid tools including nonnegative matrix analysis and graph theory. Finally, a sufficient condition, which relates to the weight function and the period length of intermittent communication is established. Moreover, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical result.