Abstract—This paper studies the coordinated tracking
problem for multi-agent systems in a sampled-data setting. The
interaction topologies are assumed to be governed by a Markov
chain. The leader's state considered is time varying. We present
necessary and sufficient conditions for boundedness of the
tracking error systems. An optimization algorithm is given to
derive the allowable control gains.
I. INTRODUCTION
Leader-following consensus has received significant
attention in the control field in recent years. This is mainly due
to its wide applications in engineering, such as unmanned air
vehicles, mobile robotic swarms, wireless sensor networks
and cooperative surveillance [1]-[5]. The main idea of
leader-following consensus is that the leader sends its state
information to the followers directly or indirectly such that the
tracking errors between leader and all followers are as small as
possible. There are many publications on the topic of the
leader-following consensus problem [6]-[8]. In [6], the
multi-agent system considered was with measurement noises
and directed interconnection topology. A sufficient condition
for mean-square stability of the closed loop tracking control
system was obtained by designing distributed estimators. In
[7], both leaderless and leader-following consensus problems
were studied. The stability or boundedness conditions were
presented based on Lyapunov theorems and Nyquist stability
criterion. By using the sampled-data control approach, the
leader-following consensus for multi-agent systems was
studied in [8]. The topology considered is deterministic.
Data-sampled approach is frequently used to discretize the
continuous-time system in control community. In recent years
this method is also used to study the multi-agent systems
[8]-[12]. Two sampled-data coordination algorithms for
double-integrator dynamics were studied in [10] where the
interaction topology is fixed undirected/directed. In [11], the
consensus problem of double-integrator multi-agent systems
with both fixed and switching topologies was studied. The
switching signal is arbitrary and only a sufficient condition is
derived to solve a consensus problem in this case. In [12], the
*The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grants nos. 61203056, 61104117, and the Zijin Intelligent
Program of Nanjing University of Science and Technology under Grant
2013\_ZJ\_0104.
H. Zhao is with the Faculty of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai'an 223003, Jiangsu, P.R. China
(corresponding author. e-mail: hyzhao10@gmail.com).
B. Zhang is with the School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science
and Technology, Nanjing 210094,P.R. China (e-mail:
baoyongzhang@gmail.com).
authors researched the stochastic bounded consensus tracking
problems of multi-agent systems, where the sampling delay
induced by the sampling process was considered.
The topologies in the above literature are all deterministic or
switching in a deterministic framework. However, the system
models are sometimes switching stochastically due to the
internal or/and external disturbance. Similar to some other
control systems, the Markovian switching model has been
used to describe the interaction topology among the agents in
very recent years [13]-[16]. In [13], the static stabilization
problem of a decentralized discrete-time single-integrator
network with Markovian switching topologies was studied. In
[14], the authors considered the consensus for a network of
single-integrator agents with Markovian switching topologies.
In [15], the authors studied the mean-square consentability
problem for a network of double-integrator agents with
Markovian switching topologies. In [16], the authors studied
the distributed discrete-time coordinated tracking problem for
multi-agent systems with Markovian switching topologies in
case of the transition probabilities are equal.
Motivated by the former considerations, we will extend the
leader-following consensus problem in [8] to the case of
Markovian switching topologies in this paper. In this case, the
leader-following consensus problem will become more
challenging. Based on algebra graph theory and Markovian
jump system theory, we present the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the convergence of the tracking error systems.
An optimization algorithm will be given to derive the
allowable control gains.
Notation: Let
and
represent, respectively, the real
number set and the nonnegative integer set. Denote the
spectral radius of the matrix
by
. Suppose that
. Let
(respectively,
) denote that
is symmetric positive semi-definite (respectively,
symmetric positive definite). Denote the determinant of the
matrix
by
. Given
, define
, where
is the mathematical
expectation.
represents the Kronecker product of
matrices.
denotes the
identity matrix. Let
denote
the
column vector with all components equal to
.
II. P
RELIMINARIES AND PROBLEM FORMULATION
A. Graph theory notions
Coordinated Tracking for Data-Sampled Multi-Agent Systems With
Markovian Switching Topologies*
Huanyu Zhao, Baoyong Zhang
2014 11th IEEE International
Conference on Control & Automation (ICCA)
June 18-20, 2014. Taichung, Taiwan
978-1-4799-2837-8/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 614