  This paper addresses the robust consensus problem under switching topologies.
Contrary to existing methods, the proposed approach provides decentralized
protocols that achieve consensus for networked multi-agent systems in a
predefined time. Namely, the protocol design provides a tuning parameter that
allows setting the convergence time of the agents to a consensus state. An
appropriate Lyapunov analysis exposes the capability of the current proposal to
achieve predefined-time consensus over switching topologies despite the
presence of bounded perturbations. Finally, the paper presents a comparison
showing that the suggested approach subsumes existing fixed-time consensus
algorithms and provides extra degrees of freedom to obtain predefined-time
consensus protocols that are less over-engineered, i.e., the difference between
the estimated convergence time and its actual value is lower in our approach.
Numerical results are given to illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of
the proposed approach.
