Data‐driven consensus control for a class of unknown nonlinear multiagent systems with time delays

Abstract

In this paper, the distributed output consensus tracking problem for a class of unknown heterogeneous discrete-time single-input single-output nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) with time delays is considered. For this problem, a distributed data-driven consensus control strategy is proposed by using improved model-free adaptive control with a time delay. First, the unknown nonlinear multiagent time delay system is transformed into a virtual data model with time-varying parameters by using a partial form dynamic linearisation method. Then, a controller with model-free adaptive control and a tracking differentiator are designed. The proposed method uses only the input/output data of neighbouring agents during the control process without mathematically modelling multiple agents. For the time delay system, the boundedness of the closed-loop tracking error is theoretically proven for both the tracking problem and the regulation problem. Furthermore, this result can be generalised to switching topology structures by a rigorous mathematical proof. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.