Proceedings of the 27th Chinese Control Conference

July 16–18, 2008, Kunming, Yunnan, China

Leader-Following Consensus Protocol for Second-Order

Multi-Agent Systems Using Neural Networks*
Liu Yang, Jia Yingmin
The Seventh Research Division, Beihang University (BUAA), Beijing 100083, P.R. China
E-mail: ylbuaa@163.com, ymjia@buaa.edu.cn

Abstract: In this paper, an adaptive leader-following consensus protocol is proposed for second-order multi-agent systems with
unknown nonlinear dynamics based on neural networks (NNs), and it is proved that if at least one agent in each connected
component of the fixed interaction graph is connected to the leader, all agents can asymptotically track the leader. By estimating
the tracking error in terms of L2 norm, the transient performance of multi-agent systems can be significantly improved. Finally,
a numerical example is included to the proposed protocol.
Key Words: Multi-agent systems, Nonlinear dynamics, Leader-following consensus protocol, Neural networks

1 INTRODUCTION to the leader. Further, in order to improve the transient per-

The multi-agent system is composed of multiple agents that
are autonomous enough to operate independently, yet can
function collectively as a group through communication.
Cooperative control of such a system has received consid-
erable attention due to its broad applications in many areas
including cooperative control of unmanned air and underwa-
ter vehicles, formation control, flocking of mobile vehicles,
distributed optimization of multiple mobile robotic systems,
and scheduling of automated highway systems. In coop-
erative control, consensus is well accepted as a fundamen-
tal paradigm, which means that all agents agree on some
particular parameter of interest. Various approaches have
been proposed for the consensus problem, and they can be
roughly categorized as the behavior-based approach and the
leader-following approach. More specifically, in the leader-
following approach, one agent acts as the leader and others
are followers who try to follow the leader’s behavior by re-
acting to their nearest neighbors [10, 11] .
Recently, many researchers have considered the consensus
problem for linear multi-agent systems relying on matrix
theory, algebraic graph theory, and control theory[1-7] . In
contrast, there has been less activity in studying group of
agents with nonlinear dynamics [8, 9] . In [8], Moreau gave
necessary and sufficient graphical conditions on consensus,
under the assumption that the vector fields of the agents sat-
isfy a certain convexity property. Using non-smooth analysis
involving the Dini derivative, Lin et al. [9] obtained the con-
sensus result for continuous-time nonlinear interconnected
systems. However, they only presented the analytical frame-
works for multiple agents with known nonlinear dynamics,
and the protocol design was not concerned.
In this paper, a new NN-based adaptive protocol is designed
to solve the leader-following consensus problem for second-
order nonlinear multi-agent systems, with neural networks
used as a tool to model the unknown nonlinear dynamics.
Under this protocol with fit consensus gains, all agents are
proved to track the leader, if at least one agent in each con-
nected component of the fixed interaction graph is connected
* This work is supported by the NSFC (60774003, 60727002), the Na-
tional 973 program (2005CB321902) and the COSTIND (A2120061303).
formance of multi-agent systems, the tracking error is esti-
mated in terms of L2 norm. Finally, a numerical simulation
example is included to illustrate the obtained results.
Throughout this paper, let 1 and 0 denote the column vectors
of appropriate dimension whose elements are all ones and
all zeros, respectively; let In and 0n denote the n × n identity
matrix and the n × n zero matrix, respectively.
2 PRELIMINARIES
In this section, we will introduce the problem to be consid-
ered, algebraic graph theory and the approximation property
of NNs.
2.1 Problem Statement
Consider a nonlinear multi-agent system consisting of n in-
terconnected agents, with each one modeled by the following
second-order dynamic plant
ẋi = vi
(1)
v̇i = a(ξi ) + bui
where xi ∈ R, vi ∈ R and ui ∈ R are respectively the position,
the velocity and the input of agent i, ξi = [xi , vi ]T ∈ R2 is the
vector of state variables, a(ξi ) is an unknown nonlinear func-
tion that contains both parametric and nonparametric uncer-
tainties, and b > 0 is an unknown constant. The dynamics of
the leader is given by
ẋ0 = v0
(2)
v̇0 = a0
where x0 ∈ R and v0 ∈ R are respectively the position and the
velocity of the leader, and a0 ∈ R is the known desired accel-
eration. Note that the states x0 and v0 are only available to the
agents who are connected to the leader. Our objective is to
design an appropriate decentralized protocol for each agent
to follow the leader, i.e., limt→∞ xi (t) = x0 for i = 1, 2, · · · , n.
Assumption 1 The trajectory vector ξ0 = [x0 , v0 ]T of the
leader is continuous, and ξ0   d0 holds with d0 being a
known bound.

535
2.2 Algebraic Graph Theory Let x̄i (t) = xi − x0 and v̄i (t) = vi − v0 , then we can obtain the
Undirected graphs are applied to model the interaction error dynamics of (1) as follows:
topologies among agents. Let G = (V , E , A) be a weighted
x̄˙i = v̄i
undirected graph of order n with the set of nodes V = (4)
v̄˙i = a(ξi ) + bui − a0
{w1 , w2 , · · · , wn }, the set of unordered pairs of nodes (called
edges) E ⊆ V × V , and a weighted adjacency matrix A =
Under the assumption that the nonlinear term a(ξi ) and the
[ai j ] with nonnegative adjacency elements ai j = a ji . In graph
constant b are known, one can state the following result.
G , node wi represents the ith agent, and ei j = (wi , w j ) (or e ji )
denotes an undirected edge between agents i and j. Then
Lemma 2 Suppose the interaction graph G is connected.
the set of neighbors of wi is denoted by Ni = {w j ∈ V :
For the ith system (4), if the protocol is designed as
(w j , wi ) ∈ E }. Graph G is called connected if there is an
undirected path between any pair of distinct nodes wi and
w j , ∀(i, j) ∈ N  {1, 2, · · · , n}.
ui = ∑ {k1[ai j (x j − xi ) + ci(x0 − xi)]
j∈Ni
(5)
Given the weighted adjacency matrix A = [ai j ] with ai j  0, a(ξi ) − a0
+k2 [ai j (v j − vi ) + ci (v0 − vi )]} −
it is stipulated that e ji ∈ E (or ei j ∈ E ) ⇔ ai j = a ji > 0, b
i.e., ai j = a ji > 0 if and only if information flows between
agents i and j. A diagonal matrix D = diag(d1 , d2 , · · · , dn ) is where consensus gains k1 and k2 satisfy k2 > 1/(bλ ) + k1 /4,
named the degree matrix of G , whose diagonal elements are then xi (t) → x0 as t → ∞ (∀i ∈ N ).
di = ∑nj=1 ai j . Then the graph Laplacian of a weighted graph
Proof Applying protocol (5) to the ith system (4) will result
G is defined as L = D − A. Obviously, L1 = 0 and 1T L = 0T
in the closed-loop system
hold.
In what follows, we mainly concern the graph G who is as- x̄˙i = v̄i
sociated with the system consisting of n agents (related to v̄˙i = b ∑ {k1 [ai j (x j − xi ) + ci (x0 − xi )]
graph G ) and one leader. By “graph G of this system is con- j∈Ni
nected”, we mean that at least one agent in each connected +k2 [ai j (v j − vi ) + ci (v0 − vi )]} (6)
component of G is connected to the leader. Denote ci  0
as the connection weight between agent i and the leader, and =b ∑ {k1 [ai j (x̄ j − x̄i) − cix̄i ]
j∈Ni
it is stipulated that ci > 0 if and only if agent i is connected +k2 [ai j (v̄ j − v̄i ) − ci v̄i ]}
to the leader. Let H = L + C be the symmetric matrix as-
sociated with G , where L is the graph Laplacian of G and that can be written in the following matrix form
C = diag(c1 , c2 , · · · , cn ).  
0n In
η̇ = η
Lemma 1 [10] If graph G is connected, then the symmetric −bk1 H −bk2 H (7)
matrix H associated with G is positive definite.  Fη

If matrix H is positive definite, then denote λ̄ > 0 and λ > 0 where η = [x̄T , v̄T ]T with x̄ = [x̄1 , x̄2 , · · · , x̄n ]T and v̄ =
as the largest and smallest eigenvalues of H, respectively. [v̄1 , v̄2 , · · · , v̄n ]T , and H = L + C has been defined in 2.2.
Consider the Lyapunov function
2.3 Approximation Property of Neural Networks
Let f (χ ) : R p → Rq be a smooth function, then it was V = η T Pη
demonstrated that, as long as χ is restricted to a compact set
S ∈ R p , for some sufficiently large number of hidden-layer with positive definite matrix
neurons, there exist weights and thresholds such that  
bk2 H In 1
P= (bk2 > ) (8)
f (χ ) = W T Φ(χ ) + ε (χ ) (3) In In λ

where χ is the input vector, Φ(•) ∈ RL is the NN basis func- Taking the time derivative of V yields
tion, W is the weight matrix of the output layer and ε (χ )
is the approximation error. The integer L denotes the num- V̇ = η T (PF + F T P)η
(9)
ber of the hidden layer neurons. For any choice of a pos-  η T Qη
itive number εN , a neural network can be found such that
ε (χ )  εN for all χ ∈ S. where  
−2bk1H −bk1 H
Q=
3 MAIN RESULTS −bk1 H 2(In − bk2H)

In this section, a leader-following consensus protocol is first
designed for system (1) in the case that a(ξi ) and b are both
known. Subsequently, based on neural networks, a robustify-
ing term is added to construct a protocol, such that all agents
asymptotically follow the leader if the interaction graph G is
connected.
Since graph G is connected, matrix H is positive definite
due to Lemma 1. Then by the Schur complement theo-
rem, Q is negative definite if k2 > 1/(bλ ) + k1 /4, which
can also guarantee that matrix P is positive definite from (8).
Therefore, it is derived that limt→∞ η (t) = 0, which leads to
limt→∞ xi (t) = x0 for ∀i ∈ N .

536
Consensus protocol (5) can also be expressed as
ui = ∑ {k1[ai j (x j − xi) + ci(x0 − xi)]
j∈Ni
+k2 [ai j (v j − vi ) + ci (v0 − vi )]} − udi
Theorem 1 Consider the ith system (4) with adaptive pro-
tocol (12). If the interaction graph G is connected, and
the positive consensus gains k1 and k2 in (12) satisfy k2 >
(10) λ̄ /bλ 2 + k1 /4, then limt→∞ xi (t) = x0 for ∀i ∈ N .

with udi = (a(ξi ) − a0 )/b. In the case that the nonlinear term Proof Substituting protocol (12) into (4) yields
a(ξi ) and the constant b are both unknown, the desired con-
trol term udi is not available. In the following, neural net-
works will be used to approximate the unknown function udi . x̄˙i = v̄i
Since udi is a smooth function on a compact set Ωξi , it can v̄˙i = a(ξi ) − a0 + b · [Δi1 − ŴiT Φi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )]
be approximated by NNs provided in (3) = a(ξi ) − a0 + b · [udi − udi + Δi1 − ŴiT Φi (ξi )
a(ξi ) − a0 −ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )]
udi =
b (11) = b · [udi + Δi1 − ŴiT Φi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )]
= WiT Φi (ξi ) + εi (ξi ) = b · [Δi1 + W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + εi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )]
(14)
where Φi (ξi ) = [φi1 (ξi ), φi2 (ξi ), · · · , φiLi (ξi )]T is the basis
which can be written in the matrix form:
vector with Li denoting the NN node number of the ith sys-
tem, Wi ∈ RLi is the weight vector, and εi (ξi ) is the approxi-    
0n In 0
mation error. η̇ = η+
−bk1H −bk2 H W +Ξ (15)
Assumption 2 On the compact set Ωξi , there exist an inte-  Fη + g
ger Li and an ideal constant wight vector Wi , such that ap-
proximation error satisfies |εi (ξi )|  εMi , where εMi > 0 is a where W = [W̃1T Φ1 (ξ1 ), · · · , W̃nT Φn (ξn )]T and Ξ = [ε1 (ξ1 ) −
given constant. ε̂M1 · sgn(−Δ1 2 ), · · · , εn (ξn ) − ε̂Mn · sgn(−Δn 2 )]T are column
vectors.
Generally, the ideal weight vector Wi is unknown and needs
to be estimated. Let Ŵi be the estimate of Wi , then the weight Since graph G is connected, matrix H is positive definite due
estimation error is W̃i = Wi − Ŵi . to Lemma 1. Take the Lyapunov function
Under the Assumptions 1 and 2, design the NN-based adap-
tive consensus protocol as follows: V = V1 + V2

ui = Δi1 − ŴiT Φi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )

with
Δi1 = k1 Δxi + k2 Δvi
V1 = η T R η
Δi2 = Δxi + Δvi
n  T 2 
(12) W̃i W̃i ε̃Mi
Δxi = ∑ [ai j (x j − xi) + ci(x0 − xi)] V2 = ∑
γwi
+
γε i
j∈Ni i=1
Δvi = ∑ [ai j (v j − vi ) + ci (v0 − vi )]
j∈Ni where
 
where k1 , k2 > 0 are undetermined consensus gains, Δxi and bk2 H 2 H 1
Δvi are the neighbor-based interaction terms of positions and R= (bk2 > ) (16)
H H λ
velocities respectively, ε̂Mi is the estimate of approximation
error εMi , and the corresponding estimation error is denoted is positive definite. By using (15), we first compute the time
by ε̃Mi = εMi − ε̂Mi . Choose the updating laws for Ŵi and ε̂Mi derivative of V1 :
as
Ŵ˙ i = −γwi Φi (ξi ) · Δi2
(13) V̇1 = η T (RF + F T R)η + 2η TRg
ε̂˙Mi = γε i · |Δi2 |
= η T (RF + F T R)η + 2(x̄T + v̄T)H(W + Ξ) (17)
where γwi and γε i are positive constants.
 η TT η + 2(x̄T + v̄T )H(W + Ξ)
Remark 1 Note that the nonlinear term a(ξi ) and the un-
known constant b do not obviously appear in the protocol where
(12), which results in convenience in practical applications.
In fact, it only needes to adjust the parameters in the basis T = RF + F T R
function Φi due to the universal functional approximation  
property of NNs, regardless of the specific form and value of −2bk1 H 2 −bk1H 2
=
a(ξi ) and b. −bk1 H 2 2(H − bk2 H 2 )

Lemma 3 (Barbalat) If the differentiable function f (t) has According to the Schur complement theorem, T is negative
a finite limit as t → ∞, and if f˙ is uniformly continuous, then definite if k2 > λ̄ /bλ 2 + k1 /4, which also guarantees that
f˙(t) → 0 as t → ∞. matrix R is positive definite due to (16).

537
Note that Theorem 2 For the ith system (4) with adaptive protocol
(12), the L2 bound of the tracking error x̄i is
(x̄T + v̄T)H(W + Ξ) 

 n  T 2 
n 1 W̃i0 W̃i0 ε̃Mi0
= ∑ [ ∑ (ai j (x̄i − x̄ j ) + cix̄i ) + (ai j (v̄i − v̄ j ) + ci v̄i )] x̄i 2   μ̄ η0 η0 + ∑
T
+ (22)
i=1 j∈N γ γwi γε i
 i
 i=1
· W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + εi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )
n where μ̄ > 0 is the largest eigenvalue of matrix R and γ > 0
= ∑ [ ∑ (ai j (xi − x j ) + ci (xi − x0 )) + (ai j (vi − v j ) is the smallest eigenvalue of matrix −T ; η0 , W̃i0 and ε̃Mi0 are
i=1 j∈Ni   the initial values of η , W̃i and ε̃Mi , respectively.
+ci (vi − v0 ))] · W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + εi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 )
n   Proof From (20), it follows that
= ∑ (−Δi2 ) · W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + εi (ξi ) − ε̂Mi · sgn(−Δi2 ) n
i=1
n   V̇  η T T η  −γ η T η = −γ ∑ (x̄2i + v̄2i ) (23)
 ∑ −Δi2 · W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + | − Δi2| · εMi − | − Δi2| · ε̂Mi i=1
i=1
n  which results in

=∑ −Δi2 · W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + |Δi2 | · ε̃Mi n
i=1 γ x̄2i  γ ∑ (x̄2i + v̄2i )  −V̇ (24)
(18) i=1
Then, it is derived that Thus, it yields that
∞ 
1 ∞
n
x̄i 22 = |x̄i (t)|2 dt  − V̇ dt
V̇  η T T η + 2 ∑ (−Δi2 · W̃iT Φi (ξi ) + |Δi2| · ε̃Mi ) 0 γ 0
i=1 1 1 1
W̃ TŴ˙ i ε̃Mi ε̂˙Mi
n = V (0) − V (∞)  V (0)
−2 ∑ ( i + ) γ γ γ

γwi γε i n  T 2 
i=1 1 T W̃i0 W̃i0 ε̃Mi0 (25)
n ˙ (19) = η R η0 + ∑ +
= η T T η + 2 ∑ [W̃iT (−Δi2 Φi (ξi ) −
Ŵ i
) γ 0 i=1 γwi γε i
γ 

i=1 wi n
W̃ TW̃ ε̃ 2 
1
ε̂˙Mi μ̄ η0T η0 + ∑
i0
 i0
+ Mi0
+ε̃Mi (|Δi2 | − )] γ γwi γε i
γε i i=1

This completes the proof.

Incorporating adaptations (13) into (19) leads to
Remark 3 Theorem 2 provides some methods to improve
the transient performance of multi-agent systems. First, it
V̇  η TT η (20)
can be observed that large parameters γε i and γwi , which at-
tenuate the effects of initial parameter errors, are vital for
Thus, the solutions η , W̃i and ε̃Mi are all bounded, which re-
good L2 performance of x̄i . Second, small initial values
sults in that η̇ is bounded from (15), and then η T T η is uni-
η0T η0 may lead to small tracking errors during the initial pe-
formly continuous. Since V is non-increasing and bounded
riod of adaptation. Third, from (22), it is seen that small μ̄
from below by zero, it has a limit V (∞) as t → ∞, and it
and large γ can improve the transient performance of sys-
yields that
tems. Consequently, appropriate consensus gains k1 and k2
∞ ∞ should be chosen, such that the largest eigenvalues of posi-
−η T η dt  −
T
V̇ dt = V (0) − V(∞)  V (0) (21) tive definite matrix R and negative definite matrix T , i.e., μ̄
0 0
and −γ , are both relatively small. And this can be solved by
using the linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach.
Then, by Lemma 3, limt→∞ η T T η = 0, that implies
limt→∞ η (t) = 0. Therefore, limt→∞ xi (t) = x0 for ∀i ∈ N , 4 SIMULATION RESULTS
which completes the proof.
Consider a system consisting of three agents described by

Remark 2 By Theorem 1, limt→∞ |xi (t) − x0 | = 0 and ẋi = vi

limt→∞ |vi (t) − v0 | = 0 hold, which implies that there exists v̇i = sin(xi + vi ) + ui, i = 1, 2, 3
a constant Mξi > 0 such that ξi (t) − ξ0   Mξi . Combining and a leader with dynamic equation
with Assumption 1, we know that ξi (t) belongs to a compact
ẋ0 = v0
set, denoted by Ωξi , then the smooth function udi (ξi ) can be
v̇0 = cost
appropriated by neural networks.
The interaction graph G is displayed on Fig. 1, and it is sup-
Theorem 1 only gives the asymptotic performance of multi- posed that ai j = ci = 1. Under the assumption that a(ξi ) and
agent systems with protocol (12), but does not concern the b are both unknown, the proposed NN-based consensus pro-
transient performance that is often more important in practi- tocol (12) is used, in which the basis function Φi (ξi ) is cho-
cal applications. To proceed, an upper bound of the tracking sen as φi j = exp(−ξi − ci j 2 /σi2j ) with Li = 20, where the
error is obtained in terms of L2 norm, which can be used centers ci j = [ci j1 , ci j2 ]T are evenly spaced in [−10, 10] and
to significantly improve the transient performance of multi- [−10, 10], and the spreads σi j are 0.5. The initial weights
agent systems. ŴiT and ε̂Mi are simply set to zeros.

538
 /HDGHU tems in undirected networks with fixed topology. By apply-
ing NNs to approximate the unknown nonlinear dynamics, a
new adaptive consensus protocol using only local informa-
   tion has been designed. Under this NN-based protocol, it
has been proved that all agents can asymptotically track the
Fig. 1 Interaction graph. leader, and several methods have been provided to improve
the transient tracking performance of multi-agent systems.
4.1 Effect of Initial States on the System Performance However, the system model considered in this manuscript is
relatively ideal, and how to design adaptive consensus pro-
Let k1 = 1, k2 = 20, γwi = γε i = 1, and the initial state of the tocols for multi-agent systems with random measurement
leader be ξ0 (0) = [0, 0]T. The initial states of three agents noises may be the future work.
are set ξ1 (0) = [−0.5, 0]T, ξ2 (0) = [0, 0]T , ξ3 (0) = [0.5, 0]T
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5 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have considered the leader-following con-
sensus problem for second-order nonlinear multi-agent sys-

539