Specified-Time Practical Consensus for General Linear Multi-Agent Systems With Switching Mechanism

In this brief, a distributed controller with a switching mechanism is proposed to realize practical consensus within any arbitrary settling time. Firstly, a time-varying control gain that guarantees an arbitrary time of convergence time is derived by solving an optimization problem. Then, by exploring the properties of time-varying control gain, the control mechanism of specified-time practical consensus control is revealed. Based on the derived time-varying control gain, a specified-time switching practical consensus protocol viewed as a receding horizon controller is designed, which can not only reach practical consensus at any pre-given settling time but also avoids some common problems involved in the specified-time practical consensus control, such as the numeral issue caused by the unbounded control gain at the settling time. Finally, two simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.