Distributed control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with unknown control directions via event/self-triggered communication

Abstract

This paper investigates the leader-following output consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) with unknown and nonidentical control directions under switching topology. To save the communication resources, a distributed adaptive control protocol together with an event-triggered communication scheme is proposed to achieve the output consensus. A self-triggered communication strategy is further given to prevent the continuous monitoring of neighbors states. Moreover, we prove that the proposed event/self-triggered strategies are Zeno-free. The obtained results are successfully applied to design the output formation controller. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results is demonstrated by two numerical examples.