Brief paper: Interconnection topologies for multi-agent coordination under leader-follower framework

  • Authors:

  • Zhijian Ji;Zidong Wang;Hai Lin;Zhen Wang

  • Affiliations:

  • College of Automation Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong, 266071, China;Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576, Singapore;College of Automation Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong, 266071, China

  • Venue:
  • Automatica (Journal of IFAC)
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In this paper, the formation control problem of the network of multiple agents is studied in terms of controllability, where the network is of the leader-follower structure with some agents taking leaders role and others being followers interconnected via the neighbor-based rule. It is shown that the controllability of a multi-agent system can be uniquely determined by the topology structure of interconnection graph, for which the investigation comes down to that for a multi-agent system with the interconnection graph being connected. Based on these observations, two kinds of uncontrollable interconnection topologies are characterized, and a necessary and sufficient eigenvector-based condition is presented. Our studies also touch upon the selection of leaders.