Observer-Based Practical Prescribed-Time Consensus Tracking Control for Multiagent Systems with Unknown Virtual Control Coefficients

This paper proposes an observer-based prescribed-time consensus tracking control method for nonlinear multiagent systems with unknown virtual control coefficients. Existing prescribed-time distributed observers require information about leader input dynamics, which is unavailable in many practical applications. To address the above issue, this paper proposes an improved prescribed-time strategy as a foundation. Then, an auxiliary system is constructed, which removes restrictions on leader input information. With the assistance of such a system, a distributed observer is synthesized, which enables a prescribed-time observation of leader state signals. Meanwhile, by decomposing the virtual control coefficient, a prescribed-time compensation law is investigated to handle nonlinear dynamics and unknown virtual control coefficients. In addition, a prescribed-time control protocol is formulated, which drives the stabilization of the multi-agent systems and the boundedness of all signals for any initial condition. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed control method is evaluated through simulation under three distinct conditions.