Leader–follower consensus for nonlinear multi-agent systems with unknown measurement sensitivities

Abstract

In this paper, the leader–follower consensus problem is investigated for a class of lower-triangular nonlinear multi-agent systems with unknown measurement sensitivities. By developing a dual-domination gain method, a distributed compensator is proposed for each follower by utilising the output information of the follower and its neighbour agents. Based on the compensator, an output feedback control law is designed to achieve consensus. These two gains are used to deal with the unknown measurement noises and nonlinear terms, respectively. Then the consensus problem is transformed into a stability problem by introducing an appropriate state transformation. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that the states of the leader and followers can achieve consensus asymptotically. In the end, numerical simulations are provided to verify the correctness of the proposed consensus algorithm.