Observer-Free Output Feedback Adaptive Control for Multivehicle Systems with Exogenous Disturbances

A new observer-free output feedback adaptive control, (OF) ² AC, method is proposed for continuous-time, minimum phase, and high-order linear multivehicle systems subject to exogenous disturbances (hereinafter referred to as "uncertain multivehicle systems"). In particular, the (OF) ² AC is based on a nonminimal state-space realization for each follower vehicle of the multivehicle system, where this realization generates an expanded set of states using the filtered input, filtered output, and their derivatives of the follower vehicles. The (OF) ² AC consists of i ) a local cooperative controller and ii ) a vehicle-level controller for each follower vehicle. Specifically, part i ) of the proposed control method addresses the leader-follower containment control problem by receiving the relative output measurements of the neighboring vehicles and its part ii ) consists of an augmenting adaptive controller for stabilization and command following in the presence of exogenous disturbances. Two illustrative numerical examples are provided to demonstrate efficacy of the (OF) ₂ AC.