Formation Tracking for Nonlinear Multi‐Agent Systems with Delays and Noise Disturbance

Abstract This paper investigates the formation tracking problem of nonlinear multi‐agent systems with communication delays and noise disturbance under directed interconnection topologies. By using a novel stochastic analysis approach and matrix theory, one establishes three formation tracking protocols containing nonlinear coupling function and delays such that the desired formations can be achieved in the sense of mean square under a special “multiple leaders” framework. Some new sufficient conditions of time‐delay dependence for the formation tracking in mean square are also developed. A simple example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.