Containment control of second-order multi-agent systems with directed topology and time-delays

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impacts of the communication time-delays to the distributed containment control of the second-order multi-agent systems with directed topology. Design/methodology/approach – A basic theoretical analysis is first carried out for the containment control of the second-order multi-agent systems under directed topology without communication time-delay and a sufficient condition is proposed for the achievement of containment control. Based on the above result and frequency-domain analysis method, a sufficient condition is also derived for the achievement of containment control of the second-order multi-agent systems under directed topology with communication time-delays. Finally, simulation results are presented to support the effectiveness of the theoretical results. Findings – For the achievement of containment control of the second-order multi-agent systems under directed topology with communication time-delay, the control gain in the control protocols is...