Leader-follower coordination of linear time-invariant multi-agent systems

In this paper, a leader-follower consensus problem for the general linear time-invariant multiagent systems (LTI-MASs) is investigated, where the leader agent has the same dynamic equations with the followers. To solve the leader-follower consensus problem for LTI-MASs, the consensus tracking algorithm for single-integrator multi-agent systems is generalized to a general case with n-order dynamics. A linear matrix inequality approach is proposed to calculate the consensus gains. Then the proposed method is generalized to the multi-agent systems with unknown parameters. Moreover, a formation tracking problem with a reference state is solved with a similar algorithm. Finally, some numerical examples are given to illustrate the obtained results. © 2010 Watam Press.