Distributed bipartite output containment control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with directed signed graphs

Abstract

This paper investigates the bipartite output containment control problem by utilising distributed control protocols for heterogeneous multi-agent systems over directed signed graphs. A fully distributed dynamic compensator is proposed to estimate the convex hull and symmetric convex hull spanned by states of leaders. Then, a distributed observer based on neighbour information is presented for estimating the state of each follower. An output feedback control protocol is further given based on the fully distributed dynamic compensator and neighbour-based observer to cope with the bipartite containment control problem of the linear heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Different from the related works, a neighbour-based observer is presented for heterogeneous multi-agent systems, in which the analysis method used in the Luenburger observer cannot be applied directly, because of the heterogeneity. Besides, the dynamics of the agents are allowed to not only have nonidentical coefficient matrices but also have different dimensions. A simulation example is shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.

Keywords:

• Bipartite output containment
• fully distributed dynamic compensator
• heterogeneous system
• neighbour-based observer
• output feedback

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xuxi Zhang

Xuxi Zhang received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2005 and 2012, respectively. Since 2005, he has been with the College of Science, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China. He is currently Associate Professor with the College of Mathematical Sciences of Harbin Engineering University. His current research interests are distributed control, cooperative control, robust and adaptive nonlinear control.

Ting Chen

Ting Chen received the B.S. degree from Harbin Normal University, Harbin, China, in 2020. She is currently working toward the M.S. degree with the Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China. Her current research interests include distributed control and cooperative control.

Xianping Liu

Xianping Liu received the B.S. degree from Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, and the M.S. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2003 and 2005, respectively. Her research interests include multi-agent systems, and cooperative control.