Second-order consensus for multi-agent systems with switching topology and communication delay

In this paper, two kinds of consensus problems for second-order agents under directed and arbitrarily switching topologies are investigated, that is, the cases without and with communication delay. For the former, by constructing a new kind of digraph and employing a new graphic method, we can specify the least convergence rate for all the agents to reach consensus. For the latter, in virtue of a matrix inequality method, a sufficient condition in the form of feasible matrix inequalities is presented for all the agents to reach consensus. This, on the other hand, shows that consensus can be reached if the delay is small enough. Finally, two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed results. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.