Distributed observer-based output feedback control for networked robot systems

This paper addresses the output feedback control problem of networked robot systems characterized by Lagrangian function. Distributed observers are established to estimate the velocities of the agents by only using position information. It is shown that the estimated velocities can converge to their true values under the condition that the position information of the agents are uniformly bounded. By using the estimated velocities, distributed observer-based protocol which provides uniformly bounded position information is established. Lyapunov-like function is constructed to show that the state errors of the agents converge to zero globally.