Node-to-node consensus tracking of multi-agent systems with sampled-data communication

This paper addresses the distributed node-to-node consensus problem of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics and sampled-data communication. Unlike most existing works on consensus control of multi-agent systems, the coordination goal in the present paper is to make the states of each follower track those of its corresponding leader asymptotically. To do this, a distributed sampled-data-based control law is provided and employed. By using a combined tool from Lyapunov stability theory and input-delay approach, some sufficient node-to-node consensus conditions depend on the upper bound of the maximal allowable sampling intervals are then provided. At last, a multi-step algorithm is given to estimate the upper bound of the maximal allowable sampling intervals.