Robust asymptotic model matching and its application to output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems

Output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems has been one of the most interesting cooperative control problems. This paper first gives a brief survey of the research on the problem from which we see that the problem can be solved in a two-step manner with the aid of a properly designed local reference for each agent: (i) a controller is designed for each agent to achieve the trajectory regulation of the agent output to its associated reference; (ii) network collaboration is added to achieve consensus among references. In the presence of system uncertainties, the robust trajectory regulation problem in (i) can be solved by an internal model design. In this paper, we formulate a novel robust asymptotic model matching problem which is less conservative than trajectory regulation and can be solved by a static controller not relying on an internal model. Moreover, network collaboration is designed in (ii) within the so-called output communication setting such that consensus among references occurs concurrently with robust asymptotic model matching. As a result, output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems is achieved with a novel approach.