ABSTRACT This paper presents the distributed control design for a class of fractional-order strict-feedback nonlinear multi-agent systems in the presence of unknown dynamics by employing backstepping strategy. Considering that the information of followers’ states are not fully measurable for feedback design, the fractional-order infinitedimension neural-network state observer is introduced to estimate the unavailable states. The infinite-dimension neuroadaptive laws are also proposed to eliminate the undesirable effects of the unknown nonlinear functions. Besides, based on the Lyapunov fractional-order stability approach and graph theory, unlike the existing results, a distributed neural adaptive observer-based control architecture is designed to ensure that all the closed-loop network signals are ultimately bounded. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed control method.

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