Destructive nodes in multi-agent controllability

Abstract: In this paper, several necessary and sufficient graphical conditions are derived for the controllability of multi-agent systems by taking advantage of the proposed concept of controllability destructive nodes. A key step of arriving at this result is the establishment of a relationship between topology structures of the controllability destructive nodes and a specific eigenvector of the Laplacian matrix. The results on double, triple and quadruple controllability destructive nodes constitute a novel approach to study the controllability. In particular, the approach is applied to the graph consisting of five nodes to get a complete graphical characterization of controllability.