Consensus Problem Over High-Order Multiagent Systems With Uncertain Nonlinearities Under Deterministic and Stochastic Topologies

IEEE Trans Cybern. 2017 Aug;47(8):2079-2088. doi: 10.1109/TCYB.2016.2628811. Epub 2016 Dec 6.

Abstract

The leaderless consensus problem over a class of high-order nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) is studied. A robust protocol is proposed which guarantees achieving consensus in the network in the presences of uncertainties in agents models. Achieving consensus in the case of stochastic links failure is studied as well. Based on the concept super-martingales, it is shown that if the probability of the network connectivity is not zero, under some conditions, achieving almost sure consensus in the network can be guaranteed. Despite existing consensus protocols for high-order stochastic networks, the proposed consensus protocol in this paper is robust to uncertain nonlinearities in the agents models, and it can be designed independent of knowledge on the set of feasible topologies (topologies with nonzero probabilities). Numerical examples for a team of single-link flexible joint manipulators with fourth-order models verify the accuracy of the proposed strategy for consensus control of high-order MASs with uncertain nonlinearities.