Leader-foll owing coordination of multi-agent systems with coupling time delays

In this paper, we consider a leader-following consensus problem of a group of autonomous agents with time-varying coupling delays. Two different cases of coupling topologies are investigated. At first, a necessary and sufficient condition is proved in the case when the interconnection topology is fixed and directed. Then a sufficient condition is proposed in the case when the coupling topology is switched and balanced. Numerical examples are also given to illustrate our results. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.