A Leaderless Consensus Algorithm in Networks of Vehicles with Time Delays

In recent years, the number of autonomous vehicles used in manufacturing systems and warehouses is increasing and distributed control algorithms are necessary to manage their paths and velocities. This paper considers a consensus problem in a leaderless network of vehicles (agents) that have to reach a common velocity while forming a uniformly spaced string. The stability and convergence speed of such second order consensus problem is studied by the authors in a recent work. In this paper, we address an issue related to its practical implementation such as the communication time delays among the agents. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee consensus in the presence of a constant delay and a modified control law is proposed to reach the consensus even if the delay makes unstable the system. Finally, a simulation campaign is conducted to verify the convergence properties of the proposed consensus protocol.