AbstractThe paper addresses the distributed cooperative formation control problem for a class of general stochastic multi‐agent systems subject to time‐varying dynamics. A type of novel modified distributed state observer is constructed, whose estimation information is used to design the control scheme for guaranteeing the mean‐square formation maintenance in finite‐horizon. Furthermore, the observer and controller parameters are obtained iteratively through solving a set of constrained recursive matrix equations. Finally, the proposed scheme has been validated by a simulation study.