Cooperative Semi-Global Output Regulation of Nonlinear Strict-Feedback Multi-Agent Systems With Nonidentical Relative Degrees

In this paper, we study the cooperative semi-global output regulation problem for a class of nonlinear strict-feedback multi-agent systems, where the subsystems are assumed to have nonidentical relative degrees. We first introduce the so-called distributed internal model that converts our problem into the cooperative semi-global stabilization problem of the corresponding augmented system composed of the original multi-agent system and the internal model. We then put this augmented system into the general block lower triangular form, and develop the block semi-global backstepping technique to stabilize it. Comparing with some existing literatures, our design has removed the identical relative degree assumption, and hence applies to a much larger group of nonlinear multi-agent systems.