Internal Model-Based Observer Design for Synchronization of Nonlinear Multiagent Systems in Switching Networks

This article brings a class of distributed internal model-based observer for followers to estimate a leader's trajectory that is governed by nonlinear dynamics subject to parametric uncertainty in a leader-following network. The observer is valid for jointly connected switching networks. It can be adopted to solve the synchronization problem of a multiagent system through a distributed control architecture composed of an observer and a perturbed output regulator for each agent. The effectiveness of the architecture is rigorously proved for a multiagent system of general nonlinear uncertain heterogeneous dynamics in the sense of asymptotically tracking a leader's trajectory. The design procedure with sufficient conditions is explicitly developed and also demonstrated by numerical simulation.