Coupled output synchronization in networked systems

A novel framework, namely synchronization of network coupled outputs has been introduced in this article. Synchronization of coupled outputs have applications in coverage control, formation control and several other cooperative tasks. Unlike output synchronization, coupled outputs have not been studied in the cooperative systems community. We formulate this novel linear coupled output synchronization problem for nonlinear cooperating agents with relative degree one and propose distributed control laws under various assumptions. The output coupling is assumed to respect the underlying undirected communication graph structure. We begin with symmetric, sign definite coupling of relative degree one outputs and then relax it to semi-definite Laplacian coupling with relative degree two outputs, particularly in double integrator networked systems. To the best of our knowledge, we establish and propose distributed control laws for the linear coupled output synchronization problem for the first time in literature. We demonstrate the utility of our findings by examining static/dynamic formation control of Revolute-Prismatic robotic arms and coupled output synchronization of double integrators.