Swarming of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with periodically intermittent control

This paper investigates a class of heterogeneous swarming systems with periodically intermittent control. It is assumed that agents in the network are nonidentical and potential functions are heterogeneous. Each agent is assumed to obtain information from the leader and the neighbors only on a series of periodically time intervals. The dynamics of the swarm members are affected by inter-individual interactions and the environment. In addition, we consider the first-order integrator system with a class of attraction/repulsion functions. Some sufficient conditions are provided to guarantee exponential stability of the whole system. Although the information from the leader agent and the neighbors is not continuous, all follower agents can track the leader agent in certain error range. A numerical example is shown to illustrate the validity of the above theoretical result.