Robust consensus of multi-agent systems with time-varying delays in noisy environment

Abstract

Over the last ten years, the consensus of multi-agent systems (MAS) has received increasing attention from mechanics, mathematics, physics, engineering sciences, social sciences, and so on. It is well known that the robustness of consensus of MAS is usually determined by several key factors, including noise, time-delays, and packet drop. In this paper, we introduce a general time-delayed MAS model with noise and also further investigate its robust consensus. In particular, we prove that the proposed algorithm is robust against the bounded time-varying delays and bounded noises. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed consensus algorithm has been validated in the classical Vicsek model with time-varying delays. And two simulation examples are also given to justify the above theoretical results. These results may have some potential applications in various fields, including mechanics, biology, and engineering sciences. © 2011 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.