Robust consensus tracking control of multiple mechanical systems under fixed and switching interaction topologies

Consensus tracking problems for multiple mechanical systems are considered in this paper, where information communications are limited between individuals and the desired trajectory is available to only a subset of the mechanical systems. A distributed tracking algorithm based on computed torque approach is proposed in the fixed interaction topology case, in which a robust feedback term is developed for each agent to estimate the external disturbances and the unknown agent dynamics. Then the result is extended to address the case under switching interaction topologies by using Lyapunov approaches and sufficient conditions are given. Two examples and numerical simulations are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed robust tracking method.