Formation Control of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems Under Fixed and Switching Hierarchies

Modern information technology is driving the rapid development of the information and automation industry through the combination of computer technology, communication technology, and control technology. Inspired by nature’s cluster movement, such as birds, people proposed the concept of Multi-Agent Systems (MASs). This paper deals with the formation control problem for a class of heterogeneous multi–agent systems with time-delays. First, the formation control of heterogeneous multi–agent systems with communication delay in fixed and switching topologies is investigated. A heterogeneous multi–agent system model with input delay and communication delay is established. Furthermore, based on this model, the formation control protocol is designed and the stability of the proposed control protocol in fixed and switched topologies is analyzed. The first– and second-order multi–agent control system was formulated for both fixed and switched topology, respectively. Then, using the new LMI toolbox, the feasibility of the parameters is obtained and the example is created by MATLAB. The simulation results show that the proposed formation control protocol with delay in this paper can make the systems converge to the expected value under fixed and switched hierarchies.