Robust Distributed Average Tracking for Disturbed Second-Order Multiagent Systems

This article investigates the distributed average tracking (DAT) problem for disturbed second-order multiagent systems, where a crowd of agents is required to track the average of the multiple time-varying signals. First, a new kind of distributed average estimator is developed for each agent to estimate the average of the multiple time-varying signals in finite time. The protocol possesses the distinguished feature of robustness to initialization errors, which can recover from network alterations. Then, an observer-based finite-time tracking protocol is proposed to make each agent exactly track the average of the multiple time-varying signals in finite time in the absence of velocity measurement. By carefully analyzing the dynamic properties of the tracking error system, a suitable Lyapunov function is constructed to estimate the settling time for convergence of the tracking error system theoretically. Furthermore, an adaptive DAT protocol is proposed, which is a fully distributed protocol because it can solve the DAT problem without using any global information. Finally, two simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the methods.