Distributed finite-time consensus of nonlinear systems under switching topologies

In this paper, the finite time consensus problem of distributed nonlinear systems is studied under the general setting of directed and switching topologies. Specifically, a contraction mapping argument is used to investigate performance of networked control systems, two classes of varying topologies are considered, and distributive control designs are presented to guarantee finite time consensus. The proposed control scheme employs a distributed observer to estimate the first left eigenvector of graph Laplacian and, by exploiting this knowledge of network connectivity, it can handle switching topologies. The proposed methodology ensures finite time convergence to consensus under varying topologies of either having a globally reachable node or being jointly strongly connected, and the topological requirements are less restrictive than those in the existing results. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.