Discrete-time adaptive distributed output observer for time-varying formation tracking of heterogeneous multi-agent systems

This paper presents discrete-time distributed algorithms to achieve time-varying output formation tracking of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems subject to time-varying faults and directed graphs. To overcome the impacts caused by unknown faults and directed graphs, a discrete-time adaptive distributed output observer-based control architecture is established to guarantee time-varying output formation tracking exponentially. In particular, several distributed leader observers are firstly given to estimate and reconstruct the leader’s state over a directed graph. The new discrete-time adaptive distributed output observer is presented to remove the need of having fully access to the leader’s system matrices and to reduce the dimension and information exchange in the developed distributed observers. In terms of this estimated information from the adaptive distributed output observer, a distributed output feedback controller integrated with an observer-based scheme is developed to compensate for the impact of unknown faults such that time-varying output formation tracking is achieved with a global exponential convergence. Two examples and simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed designs.