Distributed output-feedback consensus control of multi-agent systems with dynamically changing directed interaction topologies

This paper considers the distributed output-feedback consensus control problem for a multi-agent system with higher order linear dynamics and subject to external disturbance, under dynamically changing directed topologies and weighting factors. An extended state observer (ESO) is first designed to estimate not only the unmeasurable agent states but also the external disturbance. Based on the output of the ESO, a novel distributed control protocol is proposed. We show that, with the application of the proposed control protocol, the consensus can be achieved asymptotically by the group of agents if the union of the directed interaction graphs contains a spanning tree frequently enough. A numerical example is given to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.