Distributed Containment Control of Multi-Agent Systems Under Markovian Randomly Switching Topologies and Infinite Communication Delays

In this article, the distributed containment control problem of heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) under Markovian randomly switching topologies and infinite communication delays is studied. A novel distributed containment observer is first proposed to estimate the convex hull formed by the states of multiple leaders in the presence of Markovian randomly switching topologies and infinite communication delays. Then a distributed containment controller is further developed based on the proposed distributed observer. It is shown that the output of each follower converges to the convex hull spanned by those of leaders under the proposed controller. Moreover, our findings encompass those results on containment control of MASs with bounded distributed delays or constant delays as special cases. Ultimately, we present a simulation example to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.