Observer based leader following consensus for multi-agent systems with random packet loss

This paper addresses the leader-follower consensus problem of multi-agent systems (MASs) consisting of general linear agents in the event of stochastic communication link failure over the network. Bernoulli process is applied to model the packet dropout during operation while the packet dropout in communication links are assumed to be asynchronous and independent. A distributed observer-type algorithm is proposed based on the sufficient conditions using Lyapunov-based method, linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques and the separation principle. It is shown that the sufficient conditions can be decomposed into small conditions of same dimension as a single agent, provided that the followers are symmetrically connected, which leads to efficient solutions when considering consensus problem of a large group of high-order linear agents. Numerical simulations for groups of five double-integrator agents and three linearized quadcopter agents are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.