An examination of coordination for homogeneous linear agents under arbitrary network topology

This paper formulates the coordination control for homogeneous linear multi-agent systems under network topology without any structural confinement. This general setting is proved to be able to unify most of the existing models such as (leaderless and leader-following) synchronization/consensus control and containment control, which are usually considered separately using different analyses, within the same framework. More importantly, it can unravel the most general coordination behavior inherent in network of diffusively coupled agents with identical dynamics. Coordination analysis for such a general framework is successfully performed based on the mixed tools from Lyapunov stability theory, matrix analysis, and algebraic graph theory, which is proved being effective in specifying the convergence rate as well.