Distributed Output Regulation for a Class of Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems with Unknown-Input Leaders

TL;DR

This paper develops a distributed control approach for nonlinear multi-agent systems to achieve output regulation against an uncertain leader with unknown inputs, ensuring followers can track the leader despite uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distributed feedback control scheme for nonlinear multi-agent systems with unknown leader inputs, extending existing output regulation methods.

Findings

Successfully achieves leader-following with unknown inputs

Ensures global or semi-global tracking performance

Handles uncertainties in leader dynamics

Abstract

In this paper, a distributed output regulation problem is formulated for a class of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems subject to local disturbances. The formulation is given to study a leader-following problem when the leader contains unknown inputs and its dynamics is different from those of the followers. Based on the conventional output regulation assumptions and graph theory, distributed feedback controllers are constructed to make the agents globally or semi-globally follow the uncertain leader even when the bound of the leader's inputs is unknown to the followers.