Differential-passivity based controlled synchronization of networked robots with additive disturbances

In this research, we investigate the controlled synchronization for networked robotic systems with both structured uncertainty and unstructured additive disturbances. A new concept-differential-passivity is proposed to facilitate the synchronization design for the considered multiple robotic agents, which may also be hopeful to achieve modularity of the controller design for systems with both the structured and unstructured uncertainties. We propose an adaptive scheme to realize global input-output differential passivity of the robotic systems with unstructured additive disturbances. The established differential passivation framework allows us to design an adaptive controlled synchronization scheme for networked robotic systems interacting on strongly connected graphs, and in addition robustness with respect to non-uniform constant delays is attained. Using Lyapunov-Krasovskii stability analysis, we show the asymptotic convergence of the synchronization errors and the tracking errors. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed cooperative adaptive controller.