Fixed-Time Synchronization of a Class of Second-order Nonlinear Multi-agent Systems

The fixed-time synchronization problem for a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with a leader-follower architecture is investigated in this paper. To achieve the fixed-time tracking, the design procedure is divided into two steps. At the first step, a distributed fixed-time estimator is designed for each agent to estimate the leader's state in a fixed time. Then, at the second step, based on the technique of adding a power integrator, a fixed-time tracking controller for each agent is proposed such that the estimate leader's state can be tracked in a fixed time. Finally, an estimator-based fixed-time controller is developed such that the leader can be tracked by all the followers in a fixed time. Simulations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.