Data-Driven Leader-Follower Output Synchronization for Networked Non-Linear Multi-Agent Systems with Switching Topology and Time-Varying Delays

This paper studies the output synchronization problem for a class of networked non-linear multi-agent systems with switching topology and time-varying delays. To synchronize the outputs, a leader is introduced whose connectivity to the followers varies with time, and a novel data-driven consensus protocol based on model free adaptive control is proposed, where the reference input of each follower is designed to be the time-varying average of the neighboring agents’ outputs. Both the case when the leader is with a prescribed reference input and the case otherwise are considered. The proposed protocol allows for time-varying delays, switching topology, and does not use the agent structure or the dynamics information implicitly or explicitly. Sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the closed-loop stability, and conditions for consensus convergence are obtained, where only a joint spanning tree is required. Numerical simulations and practical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.