Distributed Output Feedback Tracking Control of Uncertain Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems with Unknown Input of Leader

This paper considers the distributed tracking control of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems in the presence of unmeasured states and unknown input of the leader over an undirected network. By approximating the uncertain nonlinear dynamics via neural network and constructing a local observer to estimate the unmeasured states, distributed output feedback tracking controllers, with static and dynamic coupling gains, respectively, are proposed, based on the relative observed states of neighboring agents. It is proved that with the developed controllers, the state of each agent synchronizes to that of the leader for any undirected connected graphs even when only a fraction of the agents in the network have access to the state information of the leader, and the distributed tracking errors are uniformly ultimately bounded. A sufficient condition to the existence of the distributed controllers is that each agent is stabilizable and detectable. Future works include an extension to the directed network topologies.