Optimal output consensus control and outlier detection

In this paper we study the output consensus problem for systems of agents with linear continuous time invariant dynamics, and derive control laws that minimize a conical combination of the energies of the agents control signals, while only using local information. We show that the optimal control requires the connectivity graph to be complete and in general requires measurements of the state errors. We identify the cases where the optimal control is only based on output errors, and show that in the infinite time horizon case, the optimal control can always be expressed as a dynamic control that is only based on the output errors. We also give a Lemma for the position of the equilibrium point for a large class of agent dynamics. As a second part of this paper we consider the problem of outlier detection, in which an agent wants to deduce if an other agent is using the consensus controller, or if it is an outlier that uses a different controller. We introduce the outlier detection equation.