Distributed leader-following consensus of heterogeneous second-order time-varying nonlinear multi-agent systems under directed switching topology

This paper focuses on studying the distributed leader-following consensus problem of heterogeneous second-order time-varying nonlinear multi-agent systems (HSTN_MASs) under directed switching topology. Firstly, based on the relative position and relative velocity measurements among neighborhood agents, a class of distributed tracking protocols are proposed. Then the state transformations are provided to solve the time-varying nonlinearity and translate the leader-following problem into the stabilization control problem. By constructing the topology-dependent Lyapunov function and choosing appropriate time-varying regulation factor and coupling strength, it is shown that the exponential tracking of HSTN_MASs can be achieved. Moreover, this paper discusses the distributed leaderless consensus problem of HSTN_MASs. Finally, several simulation examples are given to illustrate the validity of theoretical results. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.