Output Containment via Multiconsensus for Heterogeneous Linear Systems on Digraphs

In this article, we show how the problem of containment on arbitrary output trajectories for a group of linear systems connected by a digraph can be analyzed and solved based on topological results on multiconsensus concerning the network structure. Specifically, we apply this approach to the case of heterogeneous agents, for which output containment is the relevant task. We assume that each agent only measures the output of the corresponding exosystem, which defines the consensus trajectory. Indeed, the latter one is asymptotically generated by a set of linear systems (the exosystems) suitably exchanging information through the network. The proposed approach allows for the distributed consensus-based stabilization of the containment dynamics without requiring the agents to have any nonlocal knowledge of the network structure.