Group consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with fixed topologies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamical group consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with fixed topologies. Design/methodology/approach – The tool used in this paper to model the topologies of multi-agent systems is algebraic graph theory. The matrix theory and stability theory are applied to research the group consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with fixed topologies. The Laplace transform and Routh criterion are utilized to analyze the convergence properties of heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Findings – It is discovered that the dynamical group consensus for heterogeneous multi-agent systems with first-order and second-order agents can be achieved under the reasonable hypothesizes. The group consensus condition is only relied on the nonzero eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian matrix. Originality/value – The novelty of this paper is to investigate the dynamical group consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with first-order and second-order agents and fixed topologies and obtain a sufficient group consensus condition.