Abstract:This paper investigates the fixed-time rotating consensus problem of second-order multi-agent systems for a moving target governed by a general linear system. In complex environments, we consider that some agents cannot directly acquire the position and velocity information of the moving target due to limited sensing range or communication constraints. To this end, a distributed observer based on time-varying coordinate transformation is devised, using only local interaction information among agents, the proposed observer enables all agents to accurately estimate the position of the moving target within a fixed time. On this basis, a local fixed-time output feedback controller is devised, by introducing the target tracking term, rotation control term, position consensus term and velocity compensation term, the controller achieves fixed-time rotating consensus of the system in the absence of velocity measurements. Subsequently, the fixed-time stability of the closed-loop system is rigorously proved via the combination of bilateral limit homogeneity theory and Lyapunov stability theory. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the proposed controller can guarantee all agents to achieve rotating consensus within a fixed time. Finally, numerical simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.