Leader–follower consensus of uncertain variable-order fractional multi-agent systems

Abstract

The leader–follower consensus of a class of variable-order fractional (VOF) uncertain linear multi-agent systems is studied in this paper. Firstly, a new general lemma is proposed to find Lyapunov candidate functions for the stability of VOF systems. Secondly, according to the proposed lemma and the stability theorem of VOF systems, and by using the singular value decomposition of matrices and some related lemmas, a sufficient condition to obtain leader–follower consensus of uncertain VOF linear systems is given in the form of a linear matrix inequality. The proposed control protocol is dependent on the order of the VOF multi-agent system and is applicable to fixed-order and nonlinear VOF multi-agent systems. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach are verified by using some numerical simulations.