H_∞ and H₂ control of multi-agent systems with transient performance improvement

Abstract

In this paper, the H_∞ consensus control and H₂ robust control synthesised with transient performance problems are investigated for a group of autonomous agents with linear or linearised dynamics. Based on the relative information between neighbouring agents and a subset of absolute information of the agents, distributed controllers are proposed for both H_∞ and H₂ cases. Compared with the existing protocols, the one presented in this article focuses on improving the transient performance of the consensus problem. By using the tools from matrix analysis and robust control theory, conditions for the existence of controllers to those problems under an undirected communication topology are provided. Then, it is shown that the H₂ performance limit of uncertain systems under a distributed controller equals the minimum H_∞ consensus index synthesised with transient performance of a single agent by using a state feedback controller, independent of the communication topology. Finally, a simulation example as an application in Raptor-90 helicopter is proposed to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Keywords:

• transient performance
• multi-agent system
• H_∞ consensus
• H₂ robust control
• parameter uncertainty

Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 61225013 and 90916003, and Foundation of National Defense B0320110023.