Cooperative control design and stability analysis for multi-agent systems with communication delays

In this paper, the cooperative control problem in the presence of communication time delays is addressed for a broad class of multi-input-multi-output dynamical systems in the canonical form with arbitrary relative degrees. A new sampled-data predictive cooperative control is proposed by only using the delayed output feedback information and a set of less restrictive conditions on the connectivity of time varying sensor/communication networks are established. No fixed leader or time invariant sensor/communication networks are assumed. In particular, through the elaborated switching between the decoupled control and the proposed predictive cooperative control, the convergence of the overall system is rigorously proved under a mild condition on the choice of sampling period. Simulation results on the cooperative consensus for a group of mobile robots are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach