Event-triggered Control For Multi-agent Systems Research Articles

Event-Triggered Control of Multiagent Systems for Fixed and Time-Varying Network Topologies

A decentralized controller that uses event-triggered communication scheduling is developed for the leader-follower consensus problem under fixed and switching communication topologies. To eliminate continuous interagent communication, state estimates of neighboring agents are designed for control feedback and are updated via communication to reset growing estimate errors. The communication times are based on an event-triggered approach and are adapted based on the trade-off between the control system performance and the desire to minimize the amount of communication. An important aspect of the developed event trigger strategy is that communication is not required to determine when a state update is needed. Since the control strategy produces switched dynamics, analysis is provided to show that Zeno behavior is avoided by developing a positive constant lower bound on the minimum inter-event interval. A Lyapunov-based convergence analysis is also provided to indicate bounded convergence of the developed control methodology.

Edge event-triggered control for multi-agent systems under directed communication topologies

ABSTRACTThe edge event-triggered consensus control for multi-agent systems with single- or double-integrator dynamics under directed communication topologies is investigated in this paper. With the edge event-triggered sampling strategies, a class of novel consensus protocols is proposed to reduce control update frequency. The main features of the proposed edge event-triggered control include three aspects: (i) measurement errors are defined based on directed information flow and thus they allow that the communication topology is directed, (ii) each individual controller updates its output only when the associated edge event occurs and the control actions are independent of other agents, and (iii) the proposed edge event-triggered control does not exhibit Zeno behaviour and it is shown that the inter-event intervals are lower bounded by a positive constant. In the consensus analysis, matrix transformation techniques are used to convert the high-dimensional system into a low-dimensional system, and some sufficient consensus conditions are derived for the multi-agent systems with single- or double-integrator dynamics. Finally, the effectiveness of the edge event-triggered sampling strategies is illustrated by simulations.

Asynchronous event-triggered control of multi-agent systems with Sigma–Delta quantizer and packet losses

This paper investigates the consensus problem for event-triggered multi-agent systems (MAS) subject to external disturbances, time delays and packet losses as well as Sigma–Delta (ΣΔ) quantizer who has a finite number of quantization level simultaneously. Firstly, we transform this problem into a robust H∞ control by defining an appropriate controlled output. Secondly, we give a criteria to judge the consensusability of asynchronous event-triggered MAS and present a sufficient condition in terms of matrix inequalities to get the state feedback controller׳s parameters. Moreover, the maximal allowable number of successive packet losses is also given, and the algorithm designed here has made considerable contributions to save communication resources. Finally, numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed consensus protocol.

Distributed event-triggered consensus for multi-agent systems with quantisation

This paper studies the consensus problem for multi-agent systems with quantised information communication via event-triggered control. First, the asynchronous event-triggered control for multi-agent systems is considered based on distributed uniform-quantised protocols. It is shown that practical consensus among agents is guaranteed and occurrence of Zeno behaviour is prevented under the designed event-triggering mechanisms. Second, under the proposed protocols using logarithmic quantised information, both synchronous and asynchronous event-triggered control algorithms are given to solve the practical consensus problem. Meanwhile, Zeno behaviour of the closed-loop systems can be excluded under the proposed event-triggered algorithms. Finally, numerical simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the derived results.

State-dependent event-triggered control of multi-agent systems

Event-triggered control has been recently proposed as an effective strategy for the consensus of multi-agent systems. We present an improved distributed event-triggered control scheme that remedies a shortcoming of some previous event-triggered control schemes in the literature. This improved distributed event-triggered method has no need for continuously monitoring each agent' neighbors. Moreover, each agent in the multi-agent systems will not exhibit the Zeno behavior. Numerical simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed consensus control.

Asynchronous decentralised event-triggered control of multi-agent systems

In this paper, the consensus problem of first-order multi-agent systems under linear asynchronous decentralised event-triggered control is investigated. Both undirected and directed topologies are considered. In the analysis, the closed-loop multi-agent systems with the event-triggered control are modelled as switched systems. After proposing the decentralised event-triggered consensus protocols, decentralised state-dependent event conditions are derived, which act as switching signals. The consensus analyses are performed based on graph theory and stability results of switched systems. Under the event-triggered control schemes presented, consensus is reached with enlarged sampling periods and no Zeno behaviour. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.

Consensus of linear multi-agent systems via event-triggered control

This paper proposes an event-triggered control for multi-agent systems in which all agents have an identical linear dynamic mode. The asynchronous event-triggered control algorithms are proposed based on the triggering time sequences of all agents. The main contribution of this paper is to extend the event-triggered control method to investigate general linear multi-agent systems. First, by applying variable substitution method, we give the asynchronous triggering conditions. Based on the conditions, the consensus can be achieved both under fixed and switching topologies. Meanwhile, all the proposed event-triggered algorithms can exclude Zeno behaviours of the closed-loop systems. Then, the asynchronous results are applied to cope with formation control problem. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the part event-triggered protocol designs.

Event-triggered control for multi-agent systems with randomly occurring nonlinear dynamics and time-varying delay

The paper investigates the consensus problem for multi-agent systems with randomly occurring nonlinear dynamics and time-varying delay. A novel event-triggered scheme has been proposed, which can lead to a significant reduction in information communication in a network. By utilizing stochastic analysis and properties of the Kronecker product, consensus criteria are derived in the form of linear matrix inequalities, which can be readily solved using the standard numerical software. Finally, an illustrative example is used to show the effectiveness of the event-triggered scheme.

Event-Triggered Control for Multiagent Systems with the Problem of Packet Losses and Communication Delays When Using the Second-Order Neighbors’ Information

This paper mainly investigates the event-triggered control for discrete-time multiagent systems with the problem of packet losses and communication delays when both the first-order and the second-order neighbors’ information are used. Event-triggered control laws are adopted so as to reduce the frequency of individual actuation updating under the sampled-data framework for discrete-time agent dynamics. The communication graph is undirected and the loss of data across each communication link occurs at certain probability, which is governed by a Bernoulli process. It is found that the distributed consensus speeds up by using the second-order neighbors’ information when packet losses and communication delays occur. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Distributed Event-Triggered Control of Multiagent Systems with Time-Varying Topology

This paper studies the consensus of first-order discrete-time multiagent systems, where the interaction topology is time-varying. The event-triggered control is used to update the control input of each agent, and the event-triggering condition is designed based on the combination of the relative states of each agent to its neighbors. By applying the common Lyapunov function method, a sufficient condition for consensus, which is expressed as a group of linear matrix inequalities, is obtained and the feasibility of these linear matrix inequalities is further analyzed. Simulation examples are provided to explain the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Distributed Event-Triggered Control of Multiagent Systems with General Linear Dynamics

This paper discusses the event-triggered consensus problem of multiagent systems. To investigate distributed event-triggering strategies applied to general linear dynamics, we employ a dynamic controller to convert the general linear dynamic to the single-integrator model by a change of variable. The consensus value of these new states is a constant so that the distributed event-triggering scheme is obtained under periodic event detections, in which agents with general linear dynamics require knowledge only of the relative states with their neighbors. Further, an event-triggered observer is proposed to address the case that only relative output information is available. Hence, the consensus of both the state-based and observer-based cases is achieved by the distributed event-triggered dynamic controller. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of theoretical results.

Decentralised event-triggered cooperative control with limited communication

This note studies event-triggered control of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) with first-order integrator dynamics. It extends previous work on event-triggered consensus by considering limited communication capabilities through strict peer-to-peer non-continuous information exchange. The approach provides both a decentralised control law and a decentralised communication policy. Communication events require no global information and are based only on local state errors; agents do not require a global sampling period or synchronous broadcasting as in sampled-data approaches. The proposed decentralised event-triggered control technique guarantees that the inter-event times for each agent are strictly positive. Finally, the ideas in this note are used to consider the practical scenario where agents are able to exchange only quantised measurements of their states.

Distributed event-triggered control of multi-agent systems with combinational measurements

This paper studies the distributed rendezvous problem of multi-agent systems with novel event-triggered controllers. We have proposed a combinational measurement approach to event design and developed the basic event-triggered control algorithm. As a result, control of agents is only triggered at their own event time, which reduces the amount of communication and lowers the frequency of controller updates in practice. Furthermore, based on the convergence analysis of the basic algorithm, we have proposed a new iterative event-triggered algorithm where continuous measurement of the neighbor states is avoided. It is noted that the amount of communication among agents has been significantly reduced without obvious negative effects on the control performances. The effectiveness of the proposed strategies is illustrated by numerical examples in 3D spaces.

Distributed Event-Triggered Control for Multi-Agent Systems

Event-driven strategies for multi-agent systems are motivated by the future use of embedded microprocessors with limited resources that will gather information and actuate the individual agent controller updates. The controller updates considered here are event-driven, depending on the ratio of a certain measurement error with respect to the norm of a function of the state, and are applied to a first order agreement problem. A centralized formulation is considered first and then its distributed counterpart, in which agents require knowledge only of their neighbors' states for the controller implementation. The results are then extended to a self-triggered setup, where each agent computes its next update time at the previous one, without having to keep track of the state error that triggers the actuation between two consecutive update instants. The results are illustrated through simulation examples.