Connectivity Preserving Consensus for Second-Order Heterogeneous MASs With Input Constraints

This article gives an investigation to the connectivity preserving consensus (CPC) issue for the second-order heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs), which are constituted by linear and nonlinear subsystem. First, a consensus algorithm for the system without input constraints is proposed and some sufficient conditions for consensus are obtained. Due to the limited communication distance of each agent, the algorithm maintains network connectivity based on potential function techniques. Then, considering the linear and nonlinear subsystem with input constraints, respectively, the results indicate that as long as certain conditions are met, all agents can be guaranteed to achieve CPC. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is extended to the entire system with input constraints. Five examples are provided to demonstrate efficiency of theoretical results.