Consensus of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems via sliding mode observer and controller

This paper investigates the consensus problem of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) via the sliding mode control (SMC) approach. The velocity of each agent is assumed to be unmeasurable. A second-order sliding mode observer is designed to estimate the velocity. Then a distributed discontinuous control law based on first-order SMC is presented to solve the consensus problem. Moreover, to overcome the chatting problem, two controllers based on the boundary layer method and the super-twisting algorithm respectively are presented. It is shown that the MASs will achieve consensus under some given conditions. Some examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control laws.