Finite interval tracking algorithm for nonlinear multi-agent systems with communication delays

We propose an iterative learning control (ILC) tracking strategy to solve the tracking problem of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics and time-varying communication delays. The distributed tracking strategy, in which each tracking agent only utilises its own and neighbours’ information, enables the tracking agents successfully track a maneuvering target in a finite time interval although with presence of time delays. Compared with the existing related work, the quantitative relationship between the boundary of tracking errors and the estimation of time delays is derived. Furthermore, in many practical control problems, identical initialisation condition may not be satisfied, which is called initial-shift problem. Hence, a forgetting factor is introduced to deal with that problem. It is proved that the presented results are effective via conducting numerical examples.