Multi-objective consensus of interconnected system of multi-agent systems

This paper presents consensus control of a system of multi-agent systems represented as an interconnection of platoons. The agents in each platoon are interconnected through their own communication network while only the platoon leaders are connected to global system level leader network. It is assumed that all agents are identical and are linear time invariant. For consensus control, we assume a two stage protocol: an intra-platoon protocol for platoon consensus, and an inter-platoon protocol for global system-wide consensus. The intra-platoon control is based on output information received from agents within the platoon while the inter-platoon control uses only output information of platoon leaders. We show that the system of multi-agent systems arrives at a collective consensus in the sense that each platoon arrives its own platoon consensus and at the same time all platoons collectively achieve global system-wide consensus. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the methodology.