Partial component consensus of leader-following multi-agent systems via intermittent pinning control

Abstract Partial component consensus means that some components of all state variables in a multi-agent system tend to be convergence as time tends to be infinite. It is a dynamics behavior that is weaker than identical consensus. In this paper, partial component consensus of nonlinear multi-agent systems via intermittent pinning control is investigated for the first time, and the intermittent signal can be aperiodic. With the help of permutation matrix method, the corresponding error system is reduced to a new error system. Then, partial component consensus in the multi-agent system is converted into the stability of the new error system with respect to partial variables. Based on matrix theory, graph theory and stability theory of partial variables, some sufficient conditions to guarantee exponential partial component consensus are derived. Finally, numerical simulations are shown to demonstrate correctness of the theoretical results.