We investigate the third-order leader-following consensus problem of nonlinear multi-agent systems in undirected network topologies.Based on graph theory and Lyapunov stability theory,the adaptive control method is employed to achieve leader-following consensus in an undirected network of agents with nonlinear third-order dynamics against the perturbations.Simulation examples validate the correctness of the results and show that the control gains have a great influence on the convergence performance of errors for a short time.