Asymptotic containment control of uncertain multi-agent systems with partially unknown non-identical control directions

Abstract

This paper investigates the precise containment control problem for nonlinear multi-agent systems (MAS) subject to non-vanishing uncertainties and unknown non-identical control directions under directed communication topology. Due to the existence of the inherent non-vanishing/non-parametric uncertainties and unknown control directions, the precise (zero-error) containment control synthesis becomes nontrivial. The underlying problem becomes even complicated if the convergence rate is required to be pre-specified. This work aims at circumventing the aforementioned difficulties to derive a precise containment control solution. The salient features behind the derived algorithms are: i) the non-vanishing uncertainties are completely rejected; ii) the containment error is regulated to zero at prescribed convergence rate, in spite of the non-vanishing uncertainties and unknown non-identical control directions; and iii) the full-state containment rather than output containment is achieved. A simulation example is given to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.