Containment control with multiple leaders for nonlinear multi-agent systems with unstabilizable linearizations

In this paper, we study the distributed containment control problem with multiple leaders for nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) with unstabilizable linearizations under the directed topology. A novel distributed control design approach is developed to simultaneously deal with the unstabilizable linearizations and nonlinear interactions among agents. The designed controller can guarantee that the followers’ outputs will eventually converge to a limit point in the convex hull spanned by the leaders’ outputs while all the states of the closed-loop system remain bounded. Finally, a mechanical system example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.