Hyperbolic Tangent Function-Based Protocols for Global/Semi-Global Finite-Time Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems

This paper investigates the problem of global/semi-global finite-time consensus for integrator-type multi-agent systems. New hyperbolic tangent function-based protocols are proposed to achieve global and semi-global finite-time consensus for both single-integrator and double-integrator multi-agent systems with leaderless undirected and leader-following directed communication topologies. These new protocols not only provide an explicit upper-bound estimate for the settling time, but also have a user-prescribed bounded control level. In addition, compared to some existing results based on the saturation function, the proposed approach considerably simplifies the protocol design and the stability analysis. Illustrative examples and an application demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.