Time-varying output formation tracking of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems with dynamical controllers

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the problem of time-varying output formation tracking of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems on a directed communication topology that the leaders do not communicate with each other. Specifically, with injecting impulses to the states of the controllers, a dynamical control protocol is proposed, which not only reduces communication consumption, but also avoids the damage of the impulsive energy to the devices at impulsive instants. Besides, the protocol is designed using the measured output of the agents, which is more practical than those designed using the states of the agents. Then, some sufficient conditions with regard to the gain matrices and the coupling parameter are derived to guarantee that the states of the followers achieve time-varying output formation and track the convex combination of the states of the leaders as well. Finally, a numerical example is shown to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical result.