Output Consensus of Heterogeneous Uncertain Linear Multi-Agent Systems

This technical note studies the output consensus problem for a class of heterogeneous uncertain linear multi-agent systems. All the agents can be of any order (which might widely differ among the agents) and possess parametric uncertainties that range over an arbitrarily large compact set. The controller uses only the output information of the plant; moreover, the delivered information throughout the communication network is also restricted to the output of each agent. Based on the output regulation theory, it is shown that the output consensus is reached if the (state) consensus is achieved within the internal models among the agent's controllers (even though the plant's outputs, rather than the internal model's outputs, are communicated). The internal models can be designed and embedded into the controller, which provides considerable flexibility to designers in terms of the type of signals that are agreed on among the agents.