Output containment control of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems

Abstract

In this paper, the output containment control problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems is investigated. The objective of the output containment control problem is to make a group of agents converge to a convex hull spanned by some leaders. A distributed control law based on output regulation framework is proposed, where a distributed observer is designed in the control law for agents estimating the leaders' states. The salient feature of the proposed control law is that convergence trajectories of the distributed observers can only be determined by system communication topology and the initial states of leaders, which is helpful to obtain local necessary and sufficient condition for the solvability of the output containment control problem. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed control law is effective and efficient.