Fixed-time Time-Varying Group Formation Tracking of Heterogeneous Linear Multi-Agent Systems

This paper studies the fixed-time group formation tracking (FXGFT) problem for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (HMASs) under a directed interaction graph. First, a novel distributed fixed-time observer is proposed to estimate the state of each subgroup leader based on both inter-group and intra-group interactions. Then, via a coordinate transformation method, an observer-based fixed-time controller is designed for each follower. It is shown that with the proposed control protocol, the outputs of the followers in each subgroup achieve the desired sub-formation and track the output of the corresponding subgroup leader in a fixed time. Finally, a simulation example demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © World Scientific Publishing Company.