Formation-containment control for multi-agent systems with sampled data and time delays.

This paper investigates the formation containment control under sampling and with time delays for multi-agent systems (MASs). First, a novel sampling control protocol for the MASs to achieve formation containment is proposed, where the communication among agents is only occurred at the sampling instance. Then the communication load and the waste of energy can be decreased significantly. In addition, time delays are considered in this paper. Second, by establishing an appropriate Lyapunov function, sufficient conditions for MASs with sampled data and time delays reaching formation containment are obtained by handling the established Lyapunov function. Finally, the obtained results are demonstrated by a simulation example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]