Containment control of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems

In this note, we study the containment control problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems based on output regulation framework. Motivated by leader–follower output regulation problems, the leaders are assumed to be exosystems. In controller design approach for each follower, we utilize a distributed dynamic state feedback control scheme. To achieve the objective of this work, we modify the conventional output regulation error in such a way that it can handle more than one leader, and we also introduce a dynamic compensator. Our work is based on a new formulation for containment error that guarantees the convergence of all follower agents to the dynamic convex hull spanned by the leaders, and also enables us to use output regulation techniques with some modifications to solve the containment problem. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the validity of theoretical results.