Signal Generator Based Prescribed-Time Anti-Disturbance Containment Control for Multi-agent Systems with An Application to Multiple Manipulator System

This paper investigates the distributed containment control problem for a class of multi-agent systems containing uncertainties and external disturbances. We propose an embedded control structure consisting of two modules to address this issue. In module I, a containment control signal generator with prescribed-time convergence is constructed by combining prescribed-time control and containment control, and its output signal is capable of achieving the desired containment control objective. In Module II, the output of the signal generator serves as the reference trajectory for the actual agent. In order to estimate the nonlinear term and disturbances in the system, an extended state observer is combined, and then prescribed-time feedback anti-disturbance tracking controllers are designed for the agents to track the corresponding outputs of the signal generator. The two-layer control framework allows the multi-agent systems to attain the objective of prescribed-time containment control. In contrast to previous studies, the proposed distributed containment control algorithm can prevent the real agents from being impacted by the convoluted communication network and has remarkable anti-disturbance qualities. The designed controller’s effectiveness is confirmed through numerical simulations.