Cooperative preview tracking problem of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems: A distributed output regulation approach

Abstract

We are concerned with the cooperative preview tracking problem of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems under the fixed directed acyclic communication topology. First, by introducing a preview-information-based auxiliary system and a type of distributed internal model, we establish an augmented system for each follower and formulate the cooperative preview tracking problem as a distributed output regulation (DOR) problem. Then, from the solvability of the DOR problem and the stabilizability of the augmented system, we present the sufficient conditions that guarantee the achievement of the cooperative tracking consensus. With this procedure, we finally propose a distributed dynamic feedback control law for the original problem with virtual regulated output integral and preview feedforward compensation.