Decentralised regulation of nonlinear multi-agent systems with directed network topologies

ABSTRACT This paper aims to address the leader–follower regulation problem of multi-agent systems with directed network topologies, where the agents are described by feedforward nonlinearities with the growth rate being unknown a priori. Both the state feedback regulation protocol and the output feedback regulation protocol are delicately constructed such that all the states of followers can converge to the leader state globally. In this paper, a model transformation is firstly performed and the leader–follower regulation problem can be transformed into a general regulation problem. Then, by introducing an appropriate state transformation, the regulation problem can be changed into a parameter determined problem. It is proved that the parameter can be determined by both the properties of M-matrices and the estimates of nonlinear terms. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the feasibility of designed protocols.