ABSTRACT This article investigates the consensus problem of positive multi‐agent systems with exogenous disturbances via state and disturbance observers. First, state and disturbance observers for positive multi‐agent systems are designed using the observer design technique. Then, based on the designed state and disturbance observers, the distributed consensus protocols are proposed for the same and different channels of the disturbance and control input, respectively. Under the state and disturbance observers, the corresponding error systems are asymptotically stable. The positivity and consensus of multi‐agent systems can be guaranteed by linear programming and copositive Lyapunov functions. The contributions of the article lie in that: (i) The positive state and disturbance observers are designed for positive multi‐agent systems, (ii) A new kind of consensus protocol is established for positive multi‐agent systems, which can be applied to both undirected and directed communication topologies, and (iii) The positivity and consensus conditions can be solved in terms of linear programming leading to a great reduction in computational complexity. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed observation and control strategies is verified by two examples.
Zhang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.