Title : 
A survey of consensus problems in multi-agent coordination
         
        
            Author : 
Ren, Wei ; Beard, Randal W. ; Atkins, Ella M.
         
        
            Author_Institution : 
Space Syst. Lab., Maryland Univ., Baltimore, MD, USA
         
        
        
        
        
            Abstract : 
As a distributed solution to multi-agent coordination, consensus or agreement problems have been studied extensively in the literature. This paper provides a survey of consensus problems in multi-agent cooperative control with the goal of promoting research in this area. Theoretical results regarding consensus seeking under both time-invariant and dynamically changing information exchange topologies are summarized. Applications of consensus protocols to multiagent coordination are investigated. Future research directions and open problems are also proposed.
         
        
            Keywords : 
mobile robots; multi-agent systems; agreement problems; consensus problems; mobile robots; multi-agent cooperative control; multi-agent coordination; Air traffic control; Automatic control; Control systems; Mobile robots; Multiagent systems; Protocols; Topology; Tree graphs; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Wireless sensor networks;
         
        
        
        
            Conference_Titel : 
American Control Conference, 2005. Proceedings of the 2005
         
        
        
            Print_ISBN : 
0-7803-9098-9
         
        
            Electronic_ISBN : 
0743-1619
         
        
        
            DOI : 
10.1109/ACC.2005.1470239