Non-Fragility and Partial Controllability of Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract: Controllability of multi-agent systems is determined by the interconnection topologies. In practice, losing agents can change the topologies of multi-agent systems, which may affect the controllability. This paper studies non-fragility of controllability influenced by losing agents. In virtue of the concept of cutsets, necessary and sufficient conditions are established from a graphic perspective, for strong non-fragility and weak non-fragility of controllability, respectively. For multi-agent systems which contain important agents, partial controllability is proposed in terms of the concept of controllable node groups, and necessary and sufficient criteria are established for partial controllability. Moreover, partial controllability preserving problem is proposed. Utilizing the concept of compressed graphs, this problem is transformed into finding the the minimal $\mathbf{\langle s,t\rangle}$ vertex cutsets of the interconnection graph, which has a polynomial-time complexity algorithm for the solution. Several constructive examples illuminate the theoretical results.