Distributed cooperative control of leader-follower multi-agent systems under packet dropouts for quadcopters

Abstract This paper is to develop a novel distributed leader–follower algorithm for multi-agent systems in the event of stochastic communication link failure over the network. Bernoulli distribution is applied to represent the data dropout during operation while the data dropout properties of each communication links are independent from each other. Sufficient conditions for a stabilizing controller design are developed by using Lyapunov-based methodologies and Linear Matrix Inequality (LMIs) techniques. The stability condition is then decomposed into small robust stability conditions with the size of a single agent, provided that the interaction topology of the followers is an undirected graph, which leads to efficient solutions even in case that the number of agents is large and a high order system dynamics of the agent is considered. The main result is to ensure the mean square exponential stability of the overall system reaching consensus. The case of consecutive data losses in any of the communication links is also discussed in the same framework. Leader-following numerical simulations with a group of agents including quadcopters are successfully conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the novel consensus algorithm in this paper. The results show that the consensus achievement is incorporating the data loss probability; however a higher data loss rate may cause a longer time for agents to achieve consensus.