Fully distributed output formation-containment control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems via adaptive observer...

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Networked Systems
• Robotics

Background:

• Multi-agent systems (MASs) present challenges in distributed control when not all agents have complete information.
• The formation-containment problem requires agents to achieve a specific spatial arrangement while staying within a defined region controlled by leaders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To solve the distributed output formation-containment problem for heterogeneous linear MASs.
• To develop a fully distributed control framework for scenarios where followers have limited access to leader information.

Main Methods:

• The problem is reformulated as a cooperative output regulation problem.
• A fully adaptive observer is designed to reconstruct system matrices and states without global topology.
• Adaptive regulator equations are developed to handle time-varying estimated system matrices.

Main Results:

• A novel distributed control framework is proposed using adaptive observers and regulators.
• Both state and output feedback control strategies are presented.
• The method eliminates the need for global topological information in observer design.

Conclusions:

• The developed adaptive observer and control framework effectively solves the distributed output formation-containment problem for heterogeneous MASs.
• The proposed approach offers a robust solution for MASs with partial information access, validated through simulations.