Distributed Output Consensus Control for Multi-agent Systems under Disturbances

Output consensus problems for multi-agent systems under disturbances are investigated. Distributed dynamic consensus protocols, which estimate the state and the disturbances of each agent and distribute the estimations to other neighbor agents, are applied, and output consensus problems under disturbances are converted into output regulation problems. On this basis, a necessary and sufficient condition for output consensus in the form of a simultaneous stabilization condition and the solvability of regulator equations which have the same dimensions as the dynamic model of a single agent is shown, and an analytical expression of the output consensus function is obtained. Further, a sufficient condition for output consensualizability is given and a procedure for control protocol design is summarized. Finally, theoretical results are demonstrated by a numerical simulation example.