Connectivity‐preserving consensus: An adaptive event‐triggered strategy

Abstract

SummaryThe connectivity of communication graph is indispensable for consensus of multi‐agent systems (MASs), which in many applications (e.g., wireless sensor) depends on the relative distances between agents. But, in the adaptive setting particularly with system nonlinearities and event‐triggered communication, it is rather difficult to enforce the relative distances within the limited range for the connectivity. This paper focuses on developing an adaptive event‐triggered control strategy with connectivity preservation in the context of nonidentical unknown control coefficients and heterogeneous nonlinearities coupling with parameter uncertainties. First, a group of potential functions are introduced acting as control barrier functions to constrain the relative distances between agents within the limited range for all time. Also, two dynamic gains are specialized for each agent to handle the system uncertainties, system nonlinearities and negative effect of the execution error. Then, an adaptive event‐triggered protocol is designed for each agent such that the connectivity‐preserving consensus of MASs is achieved and Zeno behavior is excluded. Moreover, an extended study is conducted on a leader‐following scenario. Two simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed event‐triggered control strategy.