Cooperative output feedback consensus control of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems under Markovian switching topologies

This paper deals with the leader-following consensus problem for a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems by output feedback. The communication topology is characterized by a Markovian switching graph. Firstly, an input-driven observer is introduced to estimate the consensus error of each follower agent. Then, a cooperative nonlinear control law is constructed using the relative output information between neighboring agents by employing the backstepping methodology, which achieves leader-following consensus in mean square sense. Compared with the existing results, the nonlinear functions are required to satisfy polynomial growth condition rather than globally Lipschitz growth or Lipschitz-like growth condition. A numerical example is given to illustrate the theoretical results.