Robust Finite-Time Containment of Networked Heterogeneous Nonlinear Systems With Intermittent Measurement Only

The robust finite-time containment problem of fully heterogeneous multiagent systems with uncertainties is often challenging, especially when only intermittent output measurement is used. To address the issue posed by the nonidentical system dynamics of multiple leaders, which makes the traditional distributed estimator form for the convex hull inapplicable, a distributed finite-time estimator is constructed for each follower to extract the system matrices and states of leaders. Then, in the output-triggering setting, a finite-time extended state observer driven by intermittent output measurement is developed to reconstruct the uncertainties and unmeasurable states of followers. Meanwhile, the non-continuous output measurement will lead to the differentiation of virtual control laws undefined. To solve this issue, a filtering compensation scheme-based finite-time controller via the backstepping technique is developed for nonlinear followers, ensuring practical finite-time stability (PFTS) of the closed-loop system. It is shown that the proposed algorithm steers each follower into the preset convex combination spanned by the positions of multiple leaders. The capability of the exploited control protocol is verified through simulations and experiments.