Sequence-Based Group Consensus for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems

This article investigates a special multi-agent group consensus control problem—the restricted-sequence-synchronized (RSS) group consensus, where all subgroups achieve their respective consensus according to a restricted group consensus sequence, while agents within each subgroup simultaneously reach consensus. To comprehensively express this problem, we first introduce RSS stability, where for a single system, all of its state components arrive at the stable state following a restricted sequence. Next, the concept of RSS stability, initially applied to a single system, is extended to the RSS group consensus of multi-agent systems. Furthermore, a sliding-mode control protocol is devised to achieve RSS group consensus in heterogeneous multi-agent systems and handle the practical impact of actuator faults and external disturbance. Adaptive techniques are incorporated within this RSS group consensus controller to dynamically address the actuator faults. Two simulation cases illustrate the effective performance of the developed RSS group consensus control protocol.