Distributed fixed-time consensus tracking for high-order uncertain non-linear multi-agent systems with switching topologies

This study investigates the distributed fixed-time consensus tracking for high-order uncertain non-linear multi-agent systems with switching topologies. Each follower is assumed to be in strict-feedback form with both unknown parameters and mismatched disturbances. Different from traditional centralised tracking control problem, only a subset of the agents can acquire the desired trajectory information. By adopting backstepping method and dynamic surface control technique, the distributed fixed-time consensus protocol and appropriate adaptive laws are designed without requiring knowledge of the upper bounds of disturbances. Moreover, the problem of ‘explosion of complexity’ in standard backstepping design is avoided. Under the proposed control protocol, it is shown from the Lyapunov-based analysis that the tracking errors between all followers and the leader can converge to a small neighbourhood of the origin within a fixed time, even though the communication structures among agents dynamically change over time. Finally, a numerical example is carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.