Dynamic Consensus Tracking of Uncertain Lagrangian Systems With a Switched Command Generator

This paper studies the consensus tracking problem of uncertain Lagrangian systems. In contrast to the existing results where the command signals are sufficiently smooth, we consider a class of nonsmooth command signals generated by a switched command generator, which might be more realistic from the perspective of practical applications. The main technical innovations of this paper are threefold. First, to enable a rigorous problem formulation, some piecewise decaying function sets are defined to precisely describe the steady-state behaviors of the tracking errors. Second, to ensure the stability of the switched nonlinear closed-loop system, a system-based scaling method with the establishment of several lemmas is developed to determine the minimal dwell time of the switching signal. Third, a quantitative analysis is performed to acquire the ultimate bound for the steady-state tracking errors. The proposed control approach is evaluated by a simulation example.