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Volume 12 Issue 12
Dec.  2025

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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Article Navigation >  IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica  > 2025  >  12(12): 2541-2552
J. Wang, J. Liu, C. Chen, Z. Liu, and K. Chen, “Observer-based practical prescribed-time consensus tracking control for multiagent systems with unknown virtual control coefficients,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 2541–2552, Dec. 2025. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2025.125480
Citation: J. Wang, J. Liu, C. Chen, Z. Liu, and K. Chen, “Observer-based practical prescribed-time consensus tracking control for multiagent systems with unknown virtual control coefficients,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 2541–2552, Dec. 2025. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2025.125480
shu

Observer-Based Practical Prescribed-Time Consensus Tracking Control for Multiagent Systems With Unknown Virtual Control Coefficients

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2025.125480
Funds:  This work was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2024A1515012326, 2025A1515012109), the Pazhou Lab Youth Research Program (PZL2022KF0007), and the Science and Technology Research Program of Guangzhou (2024404J9895)
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    Abstract
  • This paper proposes an observer-based prescribed-time consensus tracking control method for nonlinear multiagent systems with unknown virtual control coefficients. Existing prescribed-time distributed observers require information about leader input dynamics, which is unavailable in many practical applications. To address the above issue, this paper proposes an improved prescribed-time strategy as a foundation. Then, an auxiliary system is constructed, which removes restrictions on leader input information. With the assistance of such a system, a distributed observer is synthesized, which enables a prescribed-time observation of leader state signals. Meanwhile, by decomposing the virtual control coefficient, a prescribed-time compensation law is investigated to handle nonlinear dynamics and unknown virtual control coefficients. In addition, a prescribed-time control protocol is formulated, which drives the stabilization of the multiagent systems and the boundedness of all signals for any initial condition. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed control method is evaluated through simulation under three distinct conditions.

     

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