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Volume 13 Issue 10
Oct.  2026

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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Article Contents
D. Li and J. Dong, “Virtual policy iteration-based H∞ robust optimal output synchronization for unknown linear multi-agent systems,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 13, no. 10, pp. 2269–2279, Oct. 2026. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2026.125858
Citation: D. Li and J. Dong, “Virtual policy iteration-based H∞ robust optimal output synchronization for unknown linear multi-agent systems,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 13, no. 10, pp. 2269–2279, Oct. 2026. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2026.125858

Virtual Policy Iteration-Based H∞ Robust Optimal Output Synchronization for Unknown Linear Multi-Agent Systems

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2026.125858
Funds:  This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (625B2040, 62273079) and the Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries in China (2013ZCX01)
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  • In this paper, the interaction terms generated by applying the distributed controller to multi-agent systems (MASs) are viewed as mismatched disturbances, thus establishing the H∞ robust optimal output synchronization (ROOS) problem. By solving this problem, the impact of inter-agent coupling disturbances is effectively regulated, thereby ensuring a quantifiable level of robustness. To address this problem, an adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm based on virtual policy iteration (VPI) is proposed. The difference with existing results is that we establish a new H∞ policy iteration (PI) theoretical framework that does not require initial stabilizing policies. Indirectly finding the optimal solution of the actual closed-loop system by using two virtual systems is the main idea of the method. Finally, model-free H∞ ROOS is achieved by collecting only the input-state data from the MASs. The proposed algorithm is validated by the simulation of the LCL coupled inverter-based distributed generation group.

     

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