Consensus of continuous-time agent dynamics with unknown input and communication delays

This paper mainly considers the consensus of general first-order continuous-time agents involving delays in both the input and communication network. Suppose that the agent dynamics is unstable and the directed topology contains a spanning tree, control gain depending on the delays bound is employed to design protocol, and some conditions are established to assure consensus. It is shown that the delays in this paper are admitted to be unknown, and the consensus can be realized if the sum of delays is not bigger than the provided bound. Furthermore, delays in this study could be time-varying in some circumstances and consensus of the vector case with a single unstable pole is also researched. Finally, the validity of the proposed results are certified via a numerical example. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the consensus problem of first-order continuous-time agents with delays, using control gain based on delay bounds to design protocols for ensuring consensus. The study shows that consensus can be achieved when the sum of unknown delays is less than the provided bound.