Consensus of nonlinear multi-agent systems with observer-based protocols

This paper is concerned with distributed pinning consensus problem for a class of nonlinear multi-agent system with observer-based protocols. Two types of state observers including local observer and distributed pinning observer are proposed for the single nonlinear agent with the first one designed by the local output information and the second one designed via the relative output information of its neighboring agents. According to the state information observed, a distributed pinning observer-based protocol is proposed for the leader-following consensus of the multi-agent system. Furthermore, two multi-step algorithms are presented to construct the observer gains and the protocol parameters for the proposed protocols respectively. It is shown that under the condition that the pinning joint communication topology contains a directed spanning tree, the sufficient criteria established can not only ensure the observation error to be globally asymptotically stable, but also guarantee the consensus of the multi-agent system to be solved asymptotically. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the observer-based protocols.