Multi-Quadcopter Formation Control Using Sampled-Data Event-Triggered Communication With Gain Optimization

This paper addresses the distributed event-triggered leader-follower formation tracking control problem for multi- agent systems (MASs) with general linear agent dynamics in a sampled-data environment. A new distributed state-estimate- based event-triggering communication mechanism is proposed to manage the inter-agent communication at each sampling instant. Then, a formation control protocol is designed based on the combined measurement of all locally-available triggered sampled information for each follower agent. The event-generator and formation controller gains are co-designed from the sufficient linear matrix inequality (LMI) conditions that ensure the uniform ultimate boundedness for the closed-loop formation error dynamics. In addition, the free parameters in the derived conditions are optimized to produce event-generator and controller gains to maximize system performance. Lastly, the developed protocols were validated using simulations of a group of linearized miniature quadcopters.