A tracking control scheme for leader based multi-agent consensus for discrete-time case

A new leader-guarding consensus problem for heterogeneous multi-agent system with switching topology in discrete-time domain is investigated. First, a new discrete-time model of heterogeneous and mobile multi-agent system with a motile leader and variable topology is established, where the location information of the active leader is completely known but the acceleration information may not be measured. A neighbor-based pinning control law and a neighbor-based state-estimation rule are proposed for solving the consensus problem. Such consensus protocols under the requirement of virtual connected guarantee that each follower-agent can estimate the leader’s velocity and then track it in a bounded area if the acceleration input of the leader is unknown, where the tracking error can be estimated based on Lyapunov approach.