Output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems under switching topologies with an exponentially unstable leader

This paper considers the output synchronization of heterogeneous multi-agent systems over switching communication graphs with an exponentially unstable leader system. We first develop a distributed observer to estimate the state of the leader using the basic idea of switched systems, and prove that the estimation errors exponentially converge to zero. The distributed observer regarded as the internal model of the leader is then used to construct a distributed controller to achieve the exponential output synchronization. The effectiveness of the theoretical results is demonstrated through a numerical example.