Impulsive Control of Variable Fractional-Order Multi-Agent Systems

The main goal of the paper is to present and study models of multi-agent systems for which the dynamics of the agents are described by a Caputo fractional derivative of variable order and a kernel that depends on an increasing function. Also, the order of the fractional derivative changes at update times. We study a case for which the exchanged information between agents occurs only at initially given update times. Two types of linear variable-order Caputo fractional models are studied. We consider both multi-agent systems without a leader and multi-agent systems with a leader. In the case of multi-agent systems without a leader, two types of models are studied. The main difference between the models is the fractional derivative describing the dynamics of agents. In the first one, a Caputo fractional derivative with respect to another function and with a continuous variable order is applied. In the second one, the applied fractional derivative changes its constant order at each update time. Mittag-Leffler stability via impulsive control is defined, and sufficient conditions are obtained. In the case of the presence of a leader in the multi-agent system, the dynamic of the agents is described by a Caputo fractional derivative with respect to an increasing function and with a constant order that changes at each update time. The leader-following consensus via impulsive control is defined, and sufficient conditions are derived. The theoretical results are illustrated with examples. We show with an example the leader's influence on the consensus.