Group consensus tracking of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with time-varying reference velocities

This paper investigates group consensus tracking problems with time-varying reference velocities. The multiple agents are described as second-order nonlinear dynamics in directed information exchange settings. For the multi-agent networks formed by finite agent groups, novel distributed protocols with/without time-varying transmission delays are designed to solve the group consensus tracking problems. The problems are first transformed into the asymptotical stability of consensus error systems and the input-to-state stability of tracking error systems, and then sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the agents realizing the group consensus tracking based on Lyapunov stability theories. Finally, several simulations are given to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.