Distributed output synchronization of discrete-time multi-agent systems: A data-driven approach

Given an autonomous exosystem generating a reference output, we consider the problem of designing a distributed data-driven control law for a network of discrete-time heterogeneous LTI agents, to synchronize the agents’ outputs to the reference one. The agents split into two groups: leaders, with direct access to the exosystem output, and followers, which only receive information from their neighbors. Each agent implements a state feedback strategy relying on its own state and on an estimate of the exogenous system state, provided by an internal state observer. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution are first derived in the model-based setup and then in a data-driven context. An algorithm is provided to design from data the matrices of the distributed control law. A numerical example illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.