Active Disturbance Rejection Consensus Control of Multi-Agent Systems Based on a Novel NESO

Distributed consensus control problems of multiagent systems (MASs) subject to total disturbances are studied in this article, where all agents communicate over a fixed topology with undirected or directed connections. First, a novel nonlinear fast convergence function and a novel nonlinear extended state observer (NNESO) are proposed for MASs to realize real-time estimation of total disturbances. Then, an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method based a consensus control protocol with disturbance compensation is presented for MASs to reduce the impact of total disturbances on consensus control of MASs. Furthermore, the stability and convergence of MASs are strictly proved by the Lyapunov stability method, which indicates that MASs under constant disturbances can realize consensus without state errors, and MASs under time-varying disturbances can realize consensus with state errors, which can be converged to an arbitrary and assigned neighborhood. Finally, the advantages of the NNESO are demonstrated by comparing the convergence speed of the nonlinear convergence function of the NNESO with that of the conventional ESOs, and the effectiveness of the consensus control method for MASs on the basis of ADRC is verified by numeric simulations and actual experiments.