Distributed Model-Free Funnel Control of Nonlinear Multiagent Systems With Switching Control Directions

This paper is concerned with the high-performance leader-following problem for the high-order heterogeneous nonlinear multiagent systems under a directed graph. It is focused on the cases where the system dynamics of each agent is totally unknown; the system nonlinearities are radially unbounded; the control directions may switch between positive and negative. They render the existing distributed control solutions infeasible. To conquer this challenge, a distributed model-free robust funnel control strategy is put forward in this paper. It achieves output synchronization with the predefined settling time and accuracy even after the control direction switching. Moreover, it is static, continuous and strikingly simple, without invoking the Nussbaum-gain technique, the sliding-mode control method, or the tools for identification, approximation, estimation, filtering, etc. The theoretical findings are illustrated by a comparative simulation on a team of inverted pendulum systems.