Distributed Dynamic Event-Triggered Consensus Control for Multiagent Systems With Guaranteed Performance and Positive Inter-Event Times

Abstract

This paper addresses the distributed consensus issue of linear multiagent systems (MASs) subject to disturbances. First, a fully distributed adaptive control law is established for each agent, removing the assumption that global information should be known prior. Additionally, unlike existing consensus studies, the restrictions on continual communication among agents and constant controller updates are eliminated through the designed state observers and event-triggered conditions (ETCs). Moreover, an innovative event-triggered condition (ETC) is created that, via the inclusion of a dynamic parameter, captures mixed triggering and time-varying thresholds as special cases. Particularly, distinct from some dwell time methods that enforce inter-event time (IET) greater than zero at the expense of asymptotic stability, positive inter-event times (IETs) and asymptotic stability can be guaranteed simultaneously by the suggested event-triggered conditions (ETCs) in the absence of disturbances. Furthermore, positive minimum inter-event times (MIETs) can be maintained even in the presence of disturbances, which indicates the robustness of the proposed event-triggered mechanism (ETM). It is shown that the suggested technique performs disturbances suppression for all agents in a completely distributed manner while omitting Zeno behavior. Finally, a simulation example demonstrates the suggested scheme’s efficacy. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —The multiagent consensus problem is considered in this paper, which can be applied to some practical systems, e.g., the unmanned aerial vehicles formation problems, as the control objective in these applications can be converted into the consensus problem of MASs. Different from existing results, a novel ETM is proposed, reducing agents’ communication and preventing continuous controller updates. In addition, disturbances widely exist in engineering. The proposed method ensures that the interval between two consecutive event triggers is greater than a small positive constant. Therefore, it is helpful for applying the proposed method in practical engineering. Finally, the established method is applied to a two-mass-spring control problem, and the effectiveness is illustrated. It is anticipated that the proposed approach can be extended to MASs with more realistic network-induced constraints and applied to more practical engineering systems.