Finite-Time Hierarchical Containment Control of Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems With Intermittent Communication

This paper considers a hierarchical containment control of a heterogeneous multi-agent system over a wide-area network. An intermittent communication mechanism is exerted on the wide-area network where communication only exists among the clusters during the communication periods through cluster-leaders. Then distributed finite-time hierarchical control strategies are designed for the heterogeneous agents to reach output consensus within clusters and finally reach output containment guided by exogenous leaders. Dwell-time conditions are developed to ensure output containment by using the output regulation technique. Simulation results are presented to validate the proposed hierarchical control strategy.