Asynchronous consensus of multiple second-order agents with partial state information

Abstract

This article studies the asynchronous consensus problem of multiple second-order agents in a sampled-data setting, where asynchrony means that the sampling period of each agent is independent of the others. It is assumed that each agent can only obtain the information of its positions relative to its neighbours at sampling instants. First, a discrete-time protocol is provided based on velocity estimation, and a sufficient and necessary condition for consensus under this protocol is established in virtue of properties of periodic systems. Second, a continuous-time protocol is presented by the theory of dynamic output feedback control, and a sufficient condition for consensus under this protocol is obtained by applying an input delay approach. Simulations are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.