A preliminary result on synchronization of heterogeneous agents via funnel control

We propose a new approach to achieve practical synchronization for heterogeneous agents. Our approach is based on the observation that a sufficiently large (but constant) gain for diffusive coupling leads to practical synchronization. In the classical setup of high-gain adaptive control, the funnel controller gained popularity in the last decade, because it is very simple and only structural knowledge of the underlying dynamical system is needed. We illustrate with simulations that “funnel synchronization” may be a promising approach to achieve practical synchronization of heterogeneous agents without the need to know the individual dynamics and the algebraic connectivity of the network (i.e., the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix). For a special case we provide a proof, but the proof for the general case is ongoing research.