Exploiting Nodes Symmetries to Control Synchronization and Consensus Patterns in Multiagent Systems

We present new conditions to obtain synchronization and consensus patterns in complex network systems. The key idea is to exploit symmetries of the nodes' vector fields to induce a desired synchronization/consensus pattern, where nodes are clustered in different groups each converging toward a different synchronized evolution. We show that the new conditions we present offer a systematic methodology to design a distributed network controller able to drive a network of interest toward a desired synchronization/consensus pattern.