CONSENSUS ANALYSIS ON NETWORKED MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS WITH STOCHASTIC COMMUNICATION LINK FAILURE

Abstract

This thesis is to develop a novel consensus algorithm or protocol for multi-agent systems in the event of communication link failure over the network. The structure or topology of the system is modeled by an algebraic graph theory, and defined as a discrete time-invariant system with a second-order dynamics. The communication link failure is governed by a Bernoulli process. Lyapunov-based methodologies and Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) techniques are then applied to find an appropriate controller gain by satisfying the sufficient conditions of the error dynamics. Therefore, the controller with the calculated gain is guaranteed to drive the system to reach a consensus. Finally, simulation and experiment studies are carried out by using two Mobile Robot Pioneer 3-DXs and one Pioneer 3-AT as a team to verify the proposed work.