Synchronization of Multi-Agent Systems With Heterogeneous Controllers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how heterogeneous controller gains influence the synchronization of multi-agent systems, enabling control over the final velocity direction and ensuring stability with limited control forces.

Contribution

It generalizes existing synchronization results by incorporating heterogeneous gains, analyzing their effect on the reachable velocity directions and stability constraints.

Findings

Heterogeneous gains allow control over the synchronized velocity direction.

Synchronization can be achieved with bounded control forces.

Simulations validate the theoretical analysis.

Abstract

This paper studies the synchronization of a multi-agent system where the agents are coupled through heterogeneous controller gains. Synchronization refers to the situation where all the agents in a group have a common velocity direction. We generalize existing results and show that by using heterogeneous controller gains, the final velocity direction at which the system of agents synchronize can be controlled. The effect of heterogeneous gains on the reachable set of this final velocity direction is further analyzed. We also show that for realistic systems, a limited control force to stabilize the agents to the synchronized condition can be achieved by confining these heterogeneous controller gains to an upper bound. Simulations are given to support the theoretical findings.