Adaptive output observers-based distributed tracking

This paper proposes a novel adaptive output observer method for the distributed output tracking control of heterogeneous systems. Unlike the existing adaptive distributed state observer, an output-based adaptive distributed output observer (OADOO) that only relies on the leader's output is proposed to estimate the leader's information. Meanwhile, an input-based triggering mechanism is exploited to avoid continuous interactions between agents, and between the leader and its neighboring agents, respectively. Then, a local controller is developed to achieve the output tracking control. In comparison with the existing results for the similar research problem, our results not only handle the tracking control subject to only relative output measurement, but also considerably lower the data exchange traffic and dimension among agents of the developed OADOO.