Self-triggered output synchronization of heterogeneous linear agents through a cloud repository

Abstract

This paper deals with a self-triggered output synchronization control method of a heterogeneous linear multi-agent system through a cloud repository. In the cloud-mediated self-triggered control approach, each agent asynchronously accesses the cloud repository to get past information on its neighbouring agents. The proposed controller consists of a virtual exosystem (VE) and a local tracking controller, where the VE is driven by an input based on the neighbours' information stored in the cloud. At the access time, each agent predicts future behaviours of the VEs' states incorporated in its neighbouring agents as well as of its own VE and locally determines its next access time to the cloud. Different from conventional self-triggered control methods, each agent cannot instantaneously communicate with its neighbouring agents at every triggering time. In this paper, we introduce an output synchronizing controller design method through a cloud repository which can cope with difficulties caused by non-instantaneous communications through the cloud repository. As the main result, we prove that the proposed self-triggered controller achieves the bounded output synchronization of the closed-loop system without exhibiting any Zeno behaviours.