Leader‐following consensus of non‐linear multi‐agent systems with jointly connected topology

The leader‐following consensus of non‐linear multi‐agent systems is investigated in this study. The authors further study this problem without the assumption that the topology among followers is connected or fixed. Based on a representative general non‐linear model, they address such a leader‐following consensus issue from a new perspective and then obtain several basic criteria for the consensus of the non‐linear multi‐agent system. Simultaneously, the simplified conditions of its corresponding linear multi‐agent systems for achieving consensus are derived. Finally, numerical examples are presented to verify the theoretical analysis.