Robust Consensus of Higher-Order Multi-Agent Systems With Attrition and Inclusion of Agents and Switching Topologies

Abstract: Some of the issues associated with the practical applications of consensus of multi-agent systems (MAS) include switching topologies, attrition and inclusion of agents from an existing network, and model uncertainties of agents. In this paper, a single distributed dynamic state-feedback protocol referred to as the Robust Attrition-Inclusion Distributed Dynamic (RAIDD) consensus protocol, is synthesized for achieving the consensus of MAS with attrition and inclusion of linear time-invariant higher-order uncertain homogeneous agents and switching topologies. A state consensus problem termed as the Robust Attrition-Inclusion (RAI) consensus problem is formulated to find this RAIDD consensus protocol. To solve this RAI consensus problem, first, the sufficient condition for the existence of the RAIDD protocol is obtained using the $\nu$-gap metric-based simultaneous stabilization approach. Next, the RAIDD consensus protocol is attained using the Glover-McFarlane robust stabilization method if the sufficient condition is satisfied. The performance of this RAIDD protocol is validated by numerical simulations.