A novel observer-based formation for nonlinear multi-agent systems with time delay and intermittent communication

In real world, the intrinsic dynamics of velocity for multi-agent systems is usually nonlinear dynamic incorporated time delay. Moreover, each agent can only obtain the information of its neighbors at some disconnected time intervals. To overcome the above essential issue, this paper aims at investigating the formation control for leader–follower second-order multi-agent systems with inherent delayed nonlinear dynamics and intermittent communications. Under the common assumption that the velocity of the active leader cannot be obtained in real time, a distributed observer is designed for each second-order follower agent. Based on the observers, a novel distributed formation control protocol is developed, by using the intermittent neighbors-based information, to guarantee that the follower agents can simultaneously track the leader and form a pre-designed formation under fixed and switching topologies. Furthermore, the similar results are obtained for the multi-agent system in the absence of time delay in corollaries. Simulation examples are provided to show the validity of the theoretical results.