Consensus output regulation without state estimation

This paper deals with consensus output regulation of network connected multi-agent systems. Every agent or subsystem has identical dynamics, and it is required to follow a desired trajectory which is generated by a linear dynamic system, known as the exosystem. Only some subsystems have access to the desired trajectory, and other subsystems will have to reply on the exchange of information through the network. In this paper, a consensus control design is proposed to ensure that the outputs of all the subsystems converge to the same desired output trajectory by exploiting the internal model design strategy. The proposed control design only uses the relative outputs of the subsystems, and does not require the estimation of subsystem state variables.