Consensus protocol for heterogeneous multi-agent systems: A Markov chain approach

This paper deals with the consensus problem for heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Different from most existing consensus protocols, we consider the consensus seeking of two types of agents, namely, active agents and passive agents. The objective is to directly control the active agents such that the states of all the agents would achieve consensus. In order to obtain a computational approach, we subtly introduce an appropriate Markov chain to cast the heterogeneous systems into a unified framework. Such a framework is helpful to tackle the constraints from passive agents. Furthermore, a sufficient and necessary condition is established to guarantee the consensus in the heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the theoretical analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.