Consensus of high-order feed-forward non-linear systems with low gain and communication constraints

Abstract

In this paper, the consensus problem of high-order multi-agent systems with inherent feed-forward delayed non-linear dynamics is investigated. First, a new kind of aperiodically intermittent communication strategy, which can be regarded as an extension of continuous communication, is proposed. The time-varying delay is considered in the multi-agent systems and the delay is not restricted to less than the communication width. Moreover, in order to reach a consensus, the effect of the feed-forward non-linearity and the time-varying delay is eliminated by designing a low-gain control protocol. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, graph theory and inequality techniques, some sufficient conditions related to the input gain and the communication width are obtained for achieving the consensus. Finally, a simulation example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.