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Distributed coordination in multi-agent systems: a graph Laplacian perspective

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Abstract

This paper reviews some main results and progress in distributed multi-agent coordination from a graph Laplacian perspective. Distributed multi-agent coordination has been a very active subject studied extensively by the systems and control community in last decades, including distributed consensus, formation control, sensor localization, distributed optimization, etc. The aim of this paper is to provide both a comprehensive survey of existing literature in distributed multi-agent coordination and a new perspective in terms of graph Laplacian to categorize the fundamental mechanisms for distributed coordination. For different types of graph Laplacians, we summarize their inherent coordination features and specific research issues. This paper also highlights several promising research directions along with some open problems that are deemed important for future study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Zhi-min Han & Zhi-yun Lin

  2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia

    Zhi-yun Lin, Min-yue Fu & Zhi-yong Chen

  3. State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Min-yue Fu

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  1. Zhi-min Han
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  2. Zhi-yun Lin
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Correspondence to Zhi-yun Lin.

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Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61273113)

ORCID: Zhi-min HAN, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8638-0440; Zhi-yun LIN, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5523-4467

Prof. Zhi-yun LIN, corresponding author of this invited review article, received his Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Yanshan University, China, in 1998, Master degree in Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University, China, in 2001, and PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada, 2005. From 2005 to 2007, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada. He joined the College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, China, in 2007. Currently, he is a Professor of Systems Control in the same college. He is also affiliated with the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology at Zhejiang University. He held visiting professor positions at several universities including the Australian National University (Australia), University of Cagliari (Italy), University of Newcastle (Australia), University of Technology Sydney (Australia), and Yale University (USA). His research interests focus on distributed control, estimation and optimization, coordinated and cooperative control of multi-agent systems, hybrid and switched system theory, and locomotion control of biped robots. He is a senior member of IEEE. He is currently an associate editor for Hybrid Systems: Nonlinear Analysis and International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Networking.

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Han, Zm., Lin, Zy., Fu, My. et al. Distributed coordination in multi-agent systems: a graph Laplacian perspective. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 16, 429–448 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1500118

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