Exponential output consensus tracking for multi-agent systems with uncertain local output function via sampled communication

Abstract

In this paper, the output consensus tracking problem is investigated for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) with asynchronous sampled communication, where only local output of the leader is required and the local output function contains an unknown parameter. A distributed adaptive observer is designed for recovering the leader’s state and unknown parameter, which has three features: (i) two predictors are contained in the observer to recover the output injection and the consensus error separately; (ii) by designing proper gain matrices, the state estimation is decomposed into the detectable part merely using the sampled local output of the leader and the undetectable part only using sampled information of the neighbors; (iii) the negative effect of the parameter estimation errors is offset by adding complementary terms with coupled auxiliary variables into the observer. Based on the observer, the control scheme is provided to realize the exponential output consensus tracking. It is shown that the maximal sampling period for the follower to receive local output from the leader is independent of the neighbors.