Rotating consensus tracking for second-order multi-agent systems with external disturbances

In this paper, the rotating consensus tracking problem for second-order multi-agent systems with external disturbances in three-dimensional space is considered. It is assumed that only a subset of the agents is given direct access to the desired trajectory information. Based on a backstepping control technique, a distributed adaptive rotating consensus protocol, driving all followers to track the leader, is developed for the case when both the relative position and relative velocity measurements are available for feedback. Moreover, the proposed control protocol design method is also extended to the case that the relative velocities are not measured. Through Lyapunov stability analysis, it is shown that, under the proposed control protocols, all followers can track the leader rotating around a common point with and without relative velocity measurements. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of our schemes.