Distributed control of a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with switching topologies

Abstract

This paper proposes a distributed control result for strong output-agreement of a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems. The nonlinear dynamics of the agents are handled by a class of nonlinear control laws. It is first proved that each controlled agent admits a positively invariant set if the outputs of the neighboring agents are bounded. Then, by showing the existence of a positively invariant set for the multi-agent system, the state boundedness of the multi-agent system is guaranteed, and strong output-agreement is proved by showing that the size of the positively invariant set is reducing. An example with simulation is employed to show the effectiveness of the main result.