AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF PRASHANTHI BANALA, for the Master of Science degree in ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, presented on 31 October 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: OUTPUT FEEDBACK H-inf CONTROL DESIGN FOR MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Farzad Pourboghrat In this thesis, the design of distributed control for identical multi-agent systems is considered based on the optimization of H-inf cost function. Identical dynamically coupled but interacting systems (agents) are considered where control action of each agent is based on relative output measurement of their neighboring agents and a subset of their own output. The agents communicate with each other to achieve a common goal. A distributed dynamic output feedback control strategy that satisfies H-inf performance for multi-agent systems is developed and corresponding H-inf performance region is analyzed. An example illustrates the necessary and sufficient condition for dynamic output feedback controller synthesis to obtain desired H-inf performance.