Average consensus control of nonlinear uncertain multiagent systems

This paper investigates the average consensus control problem of a group of nonlinear uncertain systems. A novel distributed observer is presented to estimate the initial average state of the multiple nonlinear systems. A feedback controller is then constructed for each system to track the state of the observer, where the sliding-mode technology and the Lyapunov method are employed to address the difficulties caused by unknown individual nonlinear dynamics and bounded external disturbances. The combination of observer and sliding-mode technology releases the Lipschitz condition on nonlinear terms that is generally required in the published papers. Stability analysis shows that the states of all the nonlinear systems are globally asymptotically convergent to their initial average value, despite of the uncertain nonlinear dynamics with external disturbances. The results are obtained under the assumption that the communication graph is undirectional connected. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.