Output containment control for heterogeneous discrete-time linear descriptor multi-agent systems by a feedforward output regulation approach

This paper studies the cooperative output containment control of the heterogeneous linear discrete-time descriptor multi-agent systems based on the output regulation theory. First, the output containment control problem is transformed into a standard cooperative output regulation problem. Second, since only a portion of the followers can directly obtain the information of the leaders, a new distributed observer is designed for each follower to estimate the combinations of the leaders’ states by using the local state containment errors. Third, two types of distributed control algorithms, as well as the corresponding sufficient conditions, are provided to ensure the achievement of the output containment control. Finally, numerical simulation results illustrate the validity of the proposed method.