Consensus via time-varying feedback for uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems with rather coarse input disturbances

This paper is concerned with the leader-following consensus for a class of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems (NMASs) with rather coarse input disturbances, unknown control coefficients and unknown Lipschitz rate. The essential unknowns render the existing compensation strategies inapplicable and motivate us to explore a new one. First, a time-varying strategy is developed to compensate the essential unknowns, where a suitable design function of time is introduced so that the unknowns can be overtaken by the design function as time increases. Then, distributed time-varying consensus protocols are designed and the leader-following consensus is achieved. When essential time-variations exist, the designed consensus protocols are still valid if the involved design function of time is replaced by a new one. Two examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.