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Certainty Equivalence, Separation Principle, and Cooperative Output Regulation of Multi-Agent Systems by Distributed Observer Approach

The cooperative output regulation problem of linear multi-agent systems was formulated and studied by the distributed observer approach in [20, 21]. Since then, several variants and extensions have been proposed, and the technique of the distributed observer has also been applied to such problems as formation, rendezvous, flocking, etc. In this chapter, we will first present a more general formulation of the cooperative output regulation problem for linear multi-agent systems that includes some existing versions of the cooperative output regulation problem as special cases. Then, we will describe a more general distributed observer. Finally, we will simplify the proof of the main results by more explicitly utilizing the separation principle and the certainty equivalence principle.