Connectivity-preserving approximation-free design for synchronized tracking of uncertain networked nonaffine nonlinear multi-agent systems

Abstract

This paper presents a connectivity-preserving approximation-free design strategy for the distributed synchronized tracking of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems with limited communication ranges. All nonaffine nonlinearities in pure-feedback form are assumed to be unknown. The main contribution of this paper is to achieve approximation-free synchronized tracking while preserving the initial interaction patterns among agents. To this end, each synchronization error term is individually transformed to a nonlinear error function with a predefined time-varying function. The local tracking laws using only the relative output information among agents are designed via these nonlinear error terms. The connectivity preservation and preassigned tracking performance of the proposed synchronized tracking system are recursively analyzed in the Lyapunov sense, without employing any function approximators and potential functions. Finally, the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed strategy are demonstrated through simulation examples.