Continuous and Hybrid Distributed Control for Multiagent Coordination: Consensus, Flocking, and Cyclic Pursuit

In this paper, we develop a unified framework for addressing consensus, flocking, and cyclic pursuit problems for multiagent dynamical systems. Specifically, we present continuous and hybrid distributed and decentralized controller architectures for multiagent coordination. The proposed controller architectures are predicated on system thermodynamic notions resulting in thermodynamically consistent continuous and hybrid controller architectures involving the exchange of information between agents that guarantee that the closed- loop dynamical network is consistent with basic thermodynamic principles. A unique feature of the proposed framework is that several of the proposed controller architectures are hybrid, and hence, the overall closed-loop dynamics under any of these controller algorithms achieving consensus, flocking, or cyclic pursuit possesses discontinuous flows since the controller algorithms combine logical switchings with continuous dynamics, leading to impulsive differential equations.