Distributed containment control for a class of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems with unknown control direction

This paper considers distributed coordinated control for multi-agent systems composed of multiple heterogeneous leaders and a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with external disturbances. What makes our problem more interesting and challenging is that the control direction of each nonlinear subsystem is unknown. Inspired by output regulation theory, based on the distributed internal model technique, a distributed control strategy is proposed to drive a group of heterogeneous agents with general nonlinear dynamics to converge to the convex hull spanned by multiple heterogeneous leader systems.