An observer-based consensus tracking control and application to event-triggered tracking

•A tracking control approach is developed for a second-order multi-agent system with partial measurements.•A distributed observer is proposed for the unavailable relative velocities using only the position measurements.•An event-triggered tracking control problem is solved by using the observer-based control.

Leader–follower mechanism provides an important framework for multi-agent consensus problems. In this paper, a consensus tracking problem is investigated for a second-order multi-agent system with a self-active leader. The input (acceleration) to the leader is assumed to be time-varying and unavailable to followers. An observer-based consensus tracking control is designed on the basis of a novel distributed velocity estimation technique. The ultimate boundedness and the stability of the tracking error system are analyzed by virtue of an Input-State-Stability (ISS) Lyapunov function approach. Then, the dynamic consensus tracking control is applied to solve an event-triggered tracking problem. Finally, some numerical simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus tracking control.