Formation control of multiagent systems with multileaders through completely distributed intermittent communication strategies

Abstract

The distributed time-varying formation (TVF) control problem of multiagent systems (MASs) with multileaders is explored in this research. Contrasted with the existing results, this paper considers the following situations: 1) the multifollower group is heterogeneous, as is the multileader group; 2) the heterogeneous system matrices of the multileaders are not already known to all followers; 3) some strict constraint conditions, such as well-informed follower assumption and virtual leader condition, are removed. This paper presents the event-triggered (ET) matrix observer, the adaptive ET state compensator, and the output-feedback TVF controller, which are constituted as the innovative completely distributed ET control protocol. Considering the limited communication bandwidth, the ET matrix observer and compensator are designed, with the communication-bandwidth-saving manners, to estimate the integrated system matrix and integrated state information of all leader agents, respectively. The output feedback formation controller is built to adjust the followers to keep the predetermined team formations and follow the reference trace, where the trace is all leaders outputs' convex combination. The stability analysis and simulation experiment are brought out to demonstrate the validity of the suggested control strategy.