Leaderless and leader-following consensus of multi-agent chaotic systems with unknown time delays and switching topologies

In this paper the distributed consensus problem for a class of multi-agent chaotic systems with unknown time delays under switching topologies and directed intermittent communications is investigated. Each agent is modeled as a general nonlinear system including many chaotic systems with or without time delays. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory and graph theory, some sufficient conditions guarantee the exponential convergence. A graph-dependent Lyapunov proof provides the definite relationship among the bound of unknown time delays, the admissible communication rate and each possible topology duration. Moreover, the relationship reveals that these parameters have impacts on both the convergence speed and control cost. The case with leader-following communication graph is also addressed. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.