Adaptive Prescribed-Time Containment Control for Fully Actuated Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper, a prescribed-time containment control scheme is presented for nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) characterized by high-order fully actuated (HOFA) system models. For each follower agent, a distributed prescribed-time observer is designed to ensure zero estimation error within any prescribed time under a directed communication topology. Subsequently, to compensate uncertainties and achieve prescribed-time tracking performance, the adaptive prescribed-time controllers are constructed by incorporating additional auxiliary dynamic variables. Compared to the conventional backstepping method, the HOFA system approach offers lower computational complexity. The proposed control method ensures that all signals in the closed-loop system remain bounded and guarantees that the states of the follower agents converge to the convex hull formed by the leaders within the prescribed time. Moreover, the adaptive estimate signals keep constant once the prescribed time has elapsed. Simulation results on unmanned ground vehicles and hexa-rotor air vehicle are provided to demonstrate the availability of the proposed approach.