Predictive Pinning Control with Communication Delays for Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper, based on the policy of model predictive control (MPC), a new method of predictive pinning control is proposed for the consensus problem of multi-agent systems. Pinning control is a method that the external control input is added to some agents (pinning nodes), e.g., leaders. By the external control input, consensus to a certain target value (not the average of the initial states) and faster consensus are achieved. In the proposed method, the external control input is calculated by the controller node connected to pinning nodes. Since all states of agents are required in calculation of the external control input, communication delays must be considered. The proposed algorithm includes not only calculation of the external control input but also delay compensation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is presented by two numerical examples.