A Novel Leader Following Consensus Approach for Multi-agent Systems with Data Loss

The objective of this paper is to develop a novel consensus algorithm or protocol for multi-agent systems in the event of communication link failure over the network. The structure or topology of the system is modeled by an algebraic graph theory, and considered as a discrete time-invariant system with a second-order dynamics. Bernoulli distribution is applied to represent the data dropout during operation. The sufficient conditions for the stabilization controller design is developed by Lyapunov-based methodologies and Linear matrix inequality (LMIs) techniques. The feasibility of the given LMIs is analyzed to verify the stabilization of controller design, which ensures the MAS to achieve the consensus. Leader-following numerical simulations with a group of agents are successfully conducted based on the effect of data losses, initial values, communication weights, and number of agents to demonstrate the effectiveness of the novel consensus algorithm in this paper. Finally, experimental studies are carried out by using two Pioneer 3-DX mobile robots and one Pioneer 3-AT mobile robot as a team to verify the proposed work.