Local Consensus of Nonlinear Multiagent Systems with Varying Delay Coupling

This paper investigates the local consensus issue for multiagent systems with nonlinear dynamics and time-varying delays. By defining a weighted average state of the agents and applying local linearization, we show that the local consensus of the agents in a directed communication network can be guaranteed by the asymptotic stability of several decoupled delayed systems. Then, by employing a novel Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, proposing a new extended reciprocally convex approach and using some matrix analysis, we derive a sufficient condition for the local consensus in terms of linear matrix inequalities associated with the dynamics of the agents, the eigenvalues of Laplacian matrix, and the time-varying delay. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the analytical results.