Delayed Consensus Problem for Single and Double Integrator Systems

This work deals with the analysis of the consensus problem for networks of agents constituted by single and double integrator systems. It is assumed that the communication among agents is affected by a constant time-delay. Previous and numerous analysis of the problem shows that the maximum communication time-delay that can be introduced to the network without affecting the consensus of the group of the agents depends on the considered topology. In this work, a control scheme that is based on the estimation of future states of the agents and that allows increasing the magnitude of a possible time-delay affecting the communication channels is proposed. How the proposed delay compensation strategy is independent of the network topology in the sense that the maximum allowable time-delay that could be supported by the network depends on a design parameter and not on the maximum eigenvalue of the corresponding Laplacian matrix is shown. It is formally proven that, under the proposed prediction scheme, the consensus of the group can be achieved by improving the maximum time-delay bounds previously reported in the literature. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.