ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the H∞ mean square consensus issue of leader-following multi-agent systems (MASs) over connected networks with time-varying delays, topology changes and multiple disturbances (i.e., measurement disturbances and topology stochastic noises). To achieve the consensus, a time-delayed distributed cooperative control strategy is first proposed. For suppressing the influence of data transmission disturbances, an improved point-to-area H∞ index is designed as a system robustness performance. With the aid of Itô formula and congruence transformation, a time-delay-dependent Markovian switching controller design method is presented. The proposed method not only guarantees the mean square exponential consensus of MASs, but also has a feature of robustness to communication imperfections. Remarkably, compared with the existing literatures, the proposed method is more feasible because no extra supplementary condition is required. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design approach.