Consensus behavior of agents in networked systems under general communication topologies

Abstract

In this paper, we study consensus problems and some related topics in networked dynamic systems with single-integrator dynamics. First, by introducing two useful definitions: “leader” and “follower” with respect to consensus functions, the consensus property of systems will be well characterized. For systems with general weakly connected communication topologies, we partition the agents into two groups: boundary agents and internal agents, and prove that the states of internal agents will converge to a convex combination of boundary agents. Finally, we extend the same idea to the formation control of vehicles and obtain some useful results.