An Overview of Recent Advances in Fixed-Time Cooperative Control of Multiagent Systems

TLDR

Fixed‑time cooperative control is a rapidly developing area in multiagent systems, offering guaranteed settling times independent of initial conditions, faster convergence than finite‑time control, and superior closed‑loop performance and disturbance rejection compared to asymptotic methods. This paper surveys recent advances in fixed‑time cooperative control of multiagent systems and identifies several challenging research directions for the future. The authors first review fundamental concepts of finite‑ and fixed‑time stability and stabilization, then examine recent cooperative control results, categorizing them by agent dynamics.

Abstract

Fixed-time cooperative control is currently a hot research topic in multiagent systems since it can provide a guaranteed settling time, which does not depend on initial conditions. Compared with asymptotic cooperative control algorithms, fixed-time cooperative control algorithms can achieve better closed-loop performance and disturbance rejection properties. Different from finite-time control, fixed-time cooperative control produces the faster rate of convergence and provides an explicit estimation of the settling time independent of initial conditions, which is desirable for multiagent systems. This paper aims at presenting an overview of recent advances in fixed-time cooperative control of multiagent systems. Some fundamental concepts about finite- and fixed-time stability and stabilization are first recalled with insight understanding. Then, recent results in finite- and fixed-time cooperative control are reviewed in detail and categorized according to different agent dynamics. Finally, this paper raises several challenging issues that need to be addressed in the near future.