Distributed Leader-Follower Tracking Control for Multi-Agent Systems Subject to Disturbances

Abstract

This paper studies robust tracking control for a leader-follower multi-agent system (MAS) subject to disturbances. A challenging problem is considered here, which differs from those in the literature in two aspects. First, we consider the case when all the leader and follower agents are affected by disturbances, while the existing studies assume only the followers to suffer disturbances. Second, we assume the disturbances to be bounded only in rates of change rather than magnitude as in the literature. To address the new challenges, we propose a novel observer-based distributed tracking control design. As a distinguishing feature, the followers can cooperatively estimate the disturbance affecting the leader through to adjust their maneuvers accordingly, which is enabled by the design of first-of-its-kind distributed disturbance observer. We build a specific approach for MASs. Further, we prove that they lead to bounded-error tracking for the considered context and further, asymptotically convergent tracking under a mild relaxation of disturbance setting. We validate the proposed approach using a simulation example.