Adaptive output feedback consensus tracking for heterogeneous multi-agent systems with unknown dynamics under directed graphs

This paper considers the distributed consensus tracking problem for the linear multi-agent systems with unknown dynamics under general directed graphs. Based on the output information among the agents, distributed adaptive consensus tracking protocols together with two observers, consisting of a local observer and an adaptive estimator, are designed to guarantee that all the signals in the closed-loop dynamics are uniformly ultimately bounded and the tracking errors converge to a small neighborhood around the origin. Moreover, the consensus protocols are in fully distributed fashion in the sense that the coupling gains in the controllers are independent without requiring the global knowledge that the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix associated with the whole communication graph. Finally, a simulation example is provided to verify the theoretical results. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.