Distributed output regulation of nonlinear multi-agent systems based on networked internal model

This paper considers distributed output regulation (DOR) of nonlinear multi-agent systems (MAS). A concept, called networked internal model (IM), is introduced for distributed control design of DOR based on some additional controller network. A typical networked IM with an input-to-state stability property is studied and further applied to solve DOR of a class of MAS. The result shows that the complexity of IM-based controller construction can be significantly reduced by virtue of networked IMs with certain communications among controller stations.