Output Average Consensus Over Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems via Two-Level Approach

Abstract: In this paper, a novel two-level framework was proposed and applied to solve the output average consensus problem over heterogeneous multi-agent systems. This approach is mainly based on the recent technique of system abstraction. For given multi-agent systems, we first constructed their abstractions as the upper level and solved their average consensus problem by leveraging well-known results for single integrators. Then the control protocols for physical agents in the lower level were synthesized in a hierarchical way by embedding the designed law for abstractions into an interface between two levels. In this way, the complexity coming from heterogeneous dynamics of agents is totally decoupled from that of the coordination task and the communication topologies. An example was given to show its effectiveness.