Distributed robust control for synchronised tracking of networked Euler–Lagrange systems

In this paper, we propose a distributed robust control method for synchronised tracking of networked Euler–Lagrange systems, where the time-varying reference trajectory is sent to only a subset of the agents. It is assumed that the agents can exchange information with their local neighbours on a bidirectionally connected communication graph. In the local controller equipped in each generalised coordinate of the agents, a disturbance observer is introduced to compensate for the low-passed-coupled uncertainties, and a sliding mode control term is employed to handle the uncertainties that the disturbance observer cannot compensate for sufficiently. By some damping terms, the boundedness of the signals of the overall networked nonlinear systems is first ensured. Then we show how the disturbance observer and sliding mode control term play in a cooperative way in each local generalised coordinate to achieve an excellent synchronised tracking performance. Simulation results are provided to support the theoretical results.