Hierarchical Containment Control With Bipartite Cluster Consensus for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems Under Layer-Signed Digraph

This article considers the hierarchical containment control (HCC) for flexible mirrored collaboration, which accommodates the bipartite cluster consensus behavior in two symmetric convex hulls formed by multiple leaders. First, to achieve the mirrored collaboration in symmetric convex hulls, the layer-signed digraph is generated by involving the antagonistic interaction. Benefiting from the hierarchical structure, the antagonistic interaction in the assistant-layer replaces the assumption of in-degree balance for the existing cluster consensus issues. Second, the existing types of control protocols and the framework of cooperative output regulation limit the achievement of the studied hierarchical mirrored collaboration. To solve this problem, the hierarchical cooperative output regulation is extended based on the formulated hierarchical mirrored collaborative errors. Third, the layer-signal compensator is designed estimating the states of leaders as well as guaranteeing the convergence of collaborative behaviors. Combining with the designed layer-signal compensator, a novel HCC protocol is proposed so that the bipartite cluster consensus behavior can be achieved simultaneously in two symmetric convex hulls. Finally, theoretical results are verified by performing the numerical simulation.