Distributed Optimal Observer Design of Networked Systems via Adaptive Critic Design

This article concerns the distributed optimal observer design, which aims to estimate the discrete-time nonlinear leader state for all followers with optimum online. The communication constraint and no prior knowledge of the leader’s dynamics cause a challenging task about the observer design. To this end, an adaptive critic design-based distributed optimal observer is developed via the actor–critic framework. The critic network is employed to approximate the cost function. The action network produces the optimal correction policy of the observer. Through convergence analysis, the overall estimation error and the weight estimation errors of the critic network and the action network are demonstrated to be all uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB). The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the developed observer.