Sampled‐data leader‐following consensus of second‐order nonlinear multiagent systems without velocity measurements.

Summary: In this paper, the practical leader‐following consensus via the sampled‐data protocol is investigated for second‐order nonlinear multiagent systems with external disturbances, where the velocity information of all agents are assumed to be unmeasurable. The consensus problem of the multiagent system is first transformed to a stabilization problem of the constructed error system. Because of the unknown of the agents' velocities, an observer is then proposed for the constructed error system to estimate the velocity errors. By the backstepping approach, a new protocol is designed with only position measurements and sampled‐data information. Furthermore, the upper bound of the sampling period is given. It is proved that the practical leader‐following consensus can be achieved by the proposed sampled‐data protocol with a proper sampling period. The result is then extended to the multiagent systems with multiple leaders. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the designed protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]