Second-order consensus in multi-agent systems with directed topologies and communication constraints

The paper investigates second-order consensus problem for multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamic and directed topologies, where each agent can only communicate with its neighbors on some disconnected time intervals. A novel intermittent consensus protocol is designed by its own and the neighbor's relative local information. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory and the intermittent control method, some novel and simple criteria are derived for consensus of multi-agent systems under a fixed strongly connected topology, it is proved that consensus can be reached if the general algebraic connectivity and the measure of communication are larger than the corresponding threshold values, respectively. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.