Decentralized Adaptive Control for Quasi-Consensus in Heterogeneous Nonlinear Multiagent Systems

This paper proposes some novel decentralized adaptive control protocols to settle the quasi-consensus problem of multiagent systems with heterogeneous nonlinear dynamics. Based on local communication with the leader and between the followers, some innovative control protocols are put forward to adapt the control gains and coupling weights simultaneously and to steer the consensus errors to some bounded areas. In particular, two new inequalities are proposed to establish the Lyapunov-based adaptive controller design approach for quasi-consensus. Some quasi-consensus criteria are derived by utilizing the designed controllers, in which the error bound can be modulated on the basis of the adaptive controller parameters. Numerical tests are conducted to show the feasibility of the theoretical derivation. Our findings highlight quasi-consensus in heterogeneous multiagent systems without adding some additional complex nonlinear control terms to cancel the dynamical differences between agents.