Consensus of A Class of Nonlinear Systems with Varying Topology: A Hilbert Metric Approach

Abstract

In this technical note, we introduce a novel approach to studying consensus of continuous-time nonlinear systems with varying topology based on Hilbert metric. We demonstrate that this metric offers significant flexibility in analyzing consensus properties, while effectively handling nonlinearities and time dependencies. Notably, our approach relaxes key technical assumptions from some standard results while yielding stronger conclusions with shorter proofs. This framework provides new insights into nonlinear consensus under varying topology.

The journal paper has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control