Synchronization of multi-agent systems with similar dynamics*

This paper deals with the synchronization problem for a class of linear heterogeneous multi-agent systems. The agents are assumed to be similar in the sense that a part of the dynamics is common and the remaining part is individual. Based on the common dynamics, LQR control methods are used for the design of a synchronizing networked controller. By choosing the objective function so as to reflect the behavior of synchronization errors between modified outputs of the agents, an optimal controller is obtained. It is shown that the optimal controller requires an information exchange between all agents to solve the synchronization problem. For this reason, an approximation of the optimal controller is proposed to synchronize the autonomous agents by a networked controller for arbitrary directed communication topologies.