Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the problem of observer-based time-varying leader-following formation tracking for multi-agent systems with the one-sided Lipschitz and quadratic inner-boundedness nonlinear dynamics. An idea of the observer-based protocol with an edge-based adaptive law is designed for nonlinear systems, which enable agents to achieve a desired formation tracking when it cannot obtain the full state of the nonlinear system. In contrast to the previous nonlinear formation systems, the advantage of the developed method is that it is less conservative and more general for the nonlinear system with large Lipschitz constants. Besides, under the proposed adaptive law, the design of the protocol does not rely on the known communication topology. Finally, the simulation results for one leader and six followers are proposed to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method in the nonlinear time-varying formation system.