On the herdability of linear time-invariant systems with special topological structures

In this paper we investigate the herdability property, namely the capability of a system to be driven towards the (interior of the) positive orthant, for linear time-invariant state space models. Herdability of certain matrix pairs (A, B), where A is the adjacency matrix of a multi-agent network, and B a selection matrix that singles out a subset of the agents (the "network leaders"), is explored. The cases when the graph associated with A, G(A), is directed and clustering balanced (in particular, structurally balanced), or it has a tree topology and there is a single leader, are investigated.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.