Distributed Consensus of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems Based on Feedforward Control

Abstract: This paper studies the consensus problem of heterogeneous multi-agent systems by the feedforward control and linear quadratic (LQ) optimal control theory. Different from the existing consensus control algorithms, which require to design an additional distributed observer for estimating the leader's information and to solve a set of regulator equations. In this paper, by designing a distributed feedforward controller, a non-standard neighbor error system is transformed into a standard linear system, and then an optimal consensus controller is designed by minimizing a combined state error with neighbour agents. The proposed optimal controller is obtained by solving Riccati equations, and it is shown that the corresponding cost function under the proposed distributed controllers is asymptotically optimal. The proposed consensus algorithm can be directly applicable to solve the consensus problem of homogeneous systems. Simulation example indicates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and a much faster convergence speed than the existing algorithm.