Data‐driven consensus control for a class of unknown nonlinear multiagent systems with time delays

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the distributed output consensus tracking problem for a class of unknown heterogeneous discrete‐time single‐input single‐output nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) with time delays is considered. For this problem, a distributed data‐driven consensus control strategy is proposed by using improved model‐free adaptive control with a time delay. First, the unknown nonlinear multiagent time delay system is transformed into a virtual data model with time‐varying parameters by using a partial form dynamic linearisation method. Then, a controller with model‐free adaptive control and a tracking differentiator are designed. The proposed method uses only the input/output data of neighbouring agents during the control process without mathematically modelling multiple agents. For the time delay system, the boundedness of the closed‐loop tracking error is theoretically proven for both the tracking problem and the regulation problem. Furthermore, this result can be generalised to switching topology structures by a rigorous mathematical proof. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.