Robust adaptive hierarchical insensitive tracking control of a class of leader-follower agents

In this paper, the hierarchical insensitive tracking control problem is addressed for a class of uncertain leader-follower agents with disturbed networks and controller multiplicative coefficient variations. With a uniform coupling strength, the agents are supported to be coupled in a multi-layer network structure. Based on the structure, an adaptive compensation control strategy is constructed to ensure that the follower agents track the leader agent. Depending on the control strategy, the relationship among bounds of tracking errors, sizes of network disturbances and uncertainties of agents and controllers, as well as coupling strength is explicitly explored. On the basis of Lyapunov stability theory, it is shown that bounded tracking of the resulting adaptive networked agents can be reached, and tracking errors can be reduced as small as desired. The effectiveness of the proposed design is illustrated via a decoupled model of F-18 aircraft.