Interval consensus problem of multi-agent systems in accordance with switching protocol.

In this paper, we discuss the interval consensus problem of multi-agent systems by providing a special Laplacian of directed graphs. As one of the most important issues in the coordination control of multi-agent systems, the consensus problem requires that the output of several spatially distributed agents reach a common value that depends on the states of all agents. For the given consensus protocol and initial states, a fixed consensus value is obtained. The resulting consensus value, however, may not be ideal or meet the quality that we require from the multi-agent system. In this paper, by introducing two state-dependent switching parameters into the consensus protocol, the system given by the proposed protocol can globally asymptotically converge to a designated point on a special closed and bounded interval. In other words, the system given by the proposed protocol can globally asymptotically reach interval consensus and then the system can also achieve a generalised interval average consensus if the directed graph is balanced. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]