Control of multiagent networks with misbehaving nodes

Abstract

ABSTRACT We study multiagent networks with floating, driver, and unmodelled nodes, where floating nodes exchange local information, driver nodes not only exchange local information but also take input and output roles, and unmodelled nodes have an unknown but bounded behaviour. Specifically, we consider the presence of misbehaving nodes within the floating and driver nodes in addition to the misbehaviours resulting from the unmodelled nodes, and propose a feedback control approach applied to the driver nodes for suppressing the effect of all misbehaving nodes in the multiagent network. We show closed-loop stability with the proposed approach, where the driver nodes asymptotically or closely follow a given command and the remaining nodes may also follow this command or remain bounded depending on the location of driver nodes in the multiagent network. Considering limited resources in that the number of driver nodes is generally fewer than the number of floating nodes, we further characterize the effect of the location of the driver nodes to closed-loop stability. Our findings reveal how the driver nodes need to be selected for isolating the effect of misbehaving nodes in certain portions of the multiagent network such that the nodes in those portions also follow the given command.