An inverse optimal approach for distributed preview consensus tracking

Abstract

This paper develops a distributed consensus control protocol that guarantees consensus tracking and global optimality with respect to a positive quadratic performance index for identical general linear multi-agent systems on an undirected graph. By using the previewable future reference signal, the consensus tracking control problem is converted into a preview control based optimal problem. The inverse optimality theory is introduced to overcome the difficulty of designing a distributed optimal controller, which is caused by the fact that the communication topology always interplays with the system dynamics and subsequently the global information is usually required in a conventional optimal controller design. First, a distributed optimal controller for tracking a reference signal with stable mode is designed. Then, an internal model based distributed optimal controller is further designed to track a time-varying reference signal. The structured quadratic performance indexes are derived for both cases, respectively, and based on which, two distributed optimal tracking control protocols are implemented to guarantee the asymptotic stability of the augmented systems only using local information. Simulation results show that an appropriate preview length can effectively improve the tracking performance.