Consensus of general linear and Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems with reduced-order protocols

This paper addresses the consensus problems for both general linear and Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems under an undirected communication topology. Distributed reduced-order observer-based consensus protocols are constructed relying only on the relative output information of neighboring agents. By using tools from the Sylvester equation, algebraic graph theory and Lyapunov stability theory, some sufficient conditions are derived for achieving consensus. Finally, a simulation example is given to verify the theoretical results.