Network topology

Double integrator

Combinatorics

Physics

Nonlinear system

Operating system

Computer science

Integrator

Quantum mechanics

Graph

Topology (electrical circuits)

Mathematics

Bandwidth (computing)

Multi-agent system

Consensus

Strongly connected component

Control theory (sociology)

Algorithm

Control (management)

Theoretical computer science

Artificial intelligence

Telecommunications

Selection (genetic algorithm)

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Existing results on cooperative control of multiagent systems with unknown control directions require that the underlying topology is either fixed with a strongly connected graph or switching between different strongly connected graphs. Furthermore, in most cases the graph is assumed to be balanced. This paper proposes a new class of nonlinear proportional-integral (PI) based algorithms to relax these requirements and allow for unbalanced and switching topologies having a jointly strongly connected basis. This is made possible for single-integrator (SI) and double-integrator (DI) agents with nonidentical unknown control directions by a suitable selection of the distributed nonlinear PI functions. Moreover, as a special case, the proposed algorithms are applied to strongly connected and fixed graphs. Finally, simulation examples are given to show the validity of our theoretical results.

Cooperative Control of Multiple Agents With Unknown High-Frequency Gain Signs Under Unbalanced and Switching Topologies