Containment control of heterogeneous fractional-order multi-agent systems

Fractional-order calculus has been studied deeply because many networked systems can only be described with fractional-order dynamics in complex environments. When different agents of networked systems show diverse individual features, fractional-order dynamics with heterogeneous characters will be used to illustrate the multi-agent systems (MAS). Based on the distinguishing behaviors of agents, a compounded fractional-order multi-agent systems(FOMAS) is presented with diverse dynamical equations. Suppose multiple leader agents existing in FOMAS, containment consensus control of FOMAS with directed weighted topologies is studied. By applying frequency domain analysis theory of the fractional-order operator, an upper bound of delays is obtained to ensure containment controls of heterogenous FOMAS with communication delays. The consensus results of delayed fractional-order dynamics in this paper can be expanded to the integer-order models. Finally, the results are verified by simulation examples.