Output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems based on the distributed continuous-discrete state observer

Abstract

The output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems is investigated in this note based on the leader–follower architecture. We first propose a distributed continuous-discrete state observer for each follower to continuously estimate the state of the leader only utilizing the discrete samples. The local estimates of the observer are sampled and updated at the periodic sampling time, while the local samples are transmitted aperiodically between neighboring agents. Thus, it allows the asynchronous intermittent communication in the network with the interval time-varying communication delay. Then, the distributed controller is constructed based on the distributed observer to achieve exponential output synchronization. A numerical example is used to illustrate the validity of the theoretical results.