Graph-theoretic characterisations of the steady states for containment control

Abstract

Containment control is a consensus-like protocol whose objective is to drive all the followers into the convex hull formed by the leaders. The steady states of the followers have great effect on system performance. Two kinds of cell partitions from graph theory are employed to investigate the reflections of the information topology on the steady states of the followers. It is proved that agents that belong to the same cell have the same steady states.

Keywords:

• distributed cooperative control
• multiple leaders
• containment control
• steady state

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60904051, the Royal Academy of Engineering-Research Exchanges with China and India Awards and Key Laboratory Opening Funding of HIT.KLOF.2009097.