Distributed Time-Varying Output Formation Tracking Control for General Linear Multi-Agent Systems With Multiple Leaders and Relative Output-Feedback

In this paper, a unified distributed swarm intelligence algorithm is developed to study time-varying output formation (TVOF) for a general linear multi-agent system (MAS) with a directed network. New adaptive output-feedback formation protocols are proposed to achieve TVOF stabilization for leaderless directed networks and TVOF tracking for leader-follower networks. For the leaderless case, only agents’ outputs are required to achieve the desired time-varying formation. An adaptive observer-type formation protocol is constructed via relative outputs of neighboring agents. No global information of the directed network is used to determine the protocol. A distributed algorithm is developed to solve the TVOF stabilization problem after the observability decomposition. For the leader-follower case, only partial agents have knowledge of the leaders’ information. An adaptive formation tracking protocol is constructed using dynamic relative output-feedback for neighboring followers. Based on the distributed algorithm, it is proved that the TVOF tracking problem with multiple leaders can be solved in a fully distributed manner.