Settling-Time Estimation for Finite-Time Connectivity-Preserving Rendezvous of Networked Uncertain Euler-Lagrange Systems

This article addresses finite-time connectivity-preserving rendezvous problems of networked uncertain Euler-Lagrange systems, where two types of time-varying leaders are investigated, and only a subset of followers can have access to the leader’s trajectory. The distributed estimation and control architecture is then established to solve this problem with an emphasis on the settling-time estimation. In particular, in the first layer, the finite-time distributed estimators are developed to estimate and reconstruct the states of both linear and nonlinear leaders, respectively. In the second layer, distributed controllers are designed for consensus tracking in a finite-time using estimated leader information. Further, to account for limited sensing ranges, another distributed algorithm is given via an artificial potential field to guarantee finite-time rendezvous. Numerical simulation results are given to validate the effectiveness of the proposed designs.