Robust consensus of nonlinear multi-agent systems via reliable control with probabilistic time delay

In this paper, the consensus problem of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems is investigated via reliable control in the presence of probabilistic time-varying delay. First, the communication topology among the agents is assumed to be directed and fixed. Second, by introducing a stochastic variable which satisfies Bernoulli distribution, the information of probabilistic time-varying delay is equivalently transformed into the deterministic time-varying delay with stochastic parameters. Third, by using Laplacian matrix properties, the consensus problem is converted into the conventional stability problem of the closed-loop system. The main objective of this paper is to design a state feedback reliable controller such that for all admissible uncertainties as well as actuator failure cases, the resulting closed-loop system is robustly stable in the sense of mean-square. For this purpose, through construction of a suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional containing four integral terms and utilization of Kronecker product properties along with the matrix inequality techniques, a new set of delay-dependent consensus stabilizability conditions for the closed-loop system is obtained. Based on these conditions, the desired reliable controller is designed in terms of linear matrix inequalities which can be easily solved by using any of the effective optimization algorithms. Moreover, a numerical example and its simulations are included to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control design scheme. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2016