A disturbance observer based practical coordinated tracking controller for uncertain heterogeneous multi-agent systems

This paper presents a coordinated tracking controller for multi-agent systems. We assume that agents are uncertain, nonidentical, and affected by external disturbances. The information available to the tracking controller is a weighted sum of relative measurements. A coordinated tracking controller based on the disturbance observer, which is known as a robust output feedback controller, is designed so that the disturbances acting on agents are attenuated and at the same time the weighted sum of relative measurements approximately satisfies a differential equation defined by the leader's dynamics, which results in practical coordinated tracking. Systematic design procedures of the controller as well as numerical simulations are provided.