Cooperative tracking consensus of open multi-agent systems with application to dynamic virtually coupled train set

Abstract This paper studies the cooperative tracking consensus problem of open multi-agent systems (MASs), where agents may dynamically enter or leave the system as the topology switches. A novel method of extending the structure matrix is proposed to deal with the unmatched dimensions of dynamic topologies. The switching topology is only required to be uniformly connected on average. A cooperative tracking consensus control strategy is proposed on the basis of the agent’s own information and dynamically increasing or decreasing neighbours’ information. The sufficient conditions based on the uniformly exponential stability of the Lyapunov function and a sequence of differential inequalities, as well as an average dwell time condition, are derived to guarantee the tracking consensus of open MASs. Moreover, this result is applied to the tracking consensus problem of the virtually coupled train set under dynamic coupling/decoupling. Finally, simulations are provided to show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed tracking control scheme.