Receding optimal synthesis of robust consensus for multi-agent systems with limited communication

A novel strategy based on the robust distributed model predictive control (DMPC) is proposed in this paper to address the consensus of multi-agent systems subjected to unknown-but-bounded disturbances with limited communication range. The proposed strategy utilises the formulation of the tube-based predictive control and has the ability to handle the explicit input constraints and achieve the bounded consensus with initial communication topology preserved under the disturbances. In this proposed strategy, a novel constraint is designed to guarantee the connectivity of the system under the disturbances, and the synthesis methods are proposed for the controller. Meanwhile, it is proved that the proposed algorithm in this paper is recursively feasible, the connectivity can always be preserved and the system can finally reach bounded consensus under the disturbances. A simulation example is provided to demonstrate the proposed robust DMPC-based strategy.