Practical Consensus Tracking of Asynchronously Switched Multi-Agent Systems

The practical consensus tracking problem is studied for a class of asynchronously switched multi-agent systems (MASs). The asynchronous switchings are present in the followers, the leader, and the topology, bringing dynamic heterogeneity that yields non-vanishing perturbations which inherently prevent a perfect tracking. To handle the heterogeneity, a distributed dynamic controller with adaptive observers is proposed for each follower. The embedded observers estimate both the dynamics and the state of the leader which may not be directly known by the followers while rule out unwanted merges of asynchronous switchings that yield adverse fast switchings. To deal with the non-vanishing perturbations in the presence of destabilizing effects and disconnected topologies, a piecewise-average-dwell-time-based slow/fast-mixed switching stabilization method is proposed to ensure an ultimately bounded consensus tracking performance for the MAS. We show that the obtained ultimate bound can be made arbitrarily small by properly adjusting the corresponding tunable parameters under a mild assumption. An example of vehicle platoon control is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.