Distributed fixed-time consensus for multi-agent systems: A sliding mode approach

This article investigates the sliding mode-based fixed-time consensus tracking control problem for second-order multi-agent systems with external disturbances. We consider a specific scenario where only a subset of the agents can receive state information from a virtual leader. To tackle this challenge, a fixed-time estimator is proposed, enabling the estimation of the virtual leader's state without any initial condition restrictions. A state-dependent sliding mode function with variable exponent coefficients is introduced in the controller design, aiming to achieve fixed-time consensus tracking. Additionally, the sliding-mode-based controller is non-singular and exhibits effective anti-disturbance abilities. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through numerical simulation results.