Adaptive consensus tracking control of uncertain nonlinear system: A multi-channel triggering strategy

This paper considers the consensus tracking control problem for a class of uncertain high-order nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) based on event-triggered communication. In order to maximize the savings of communication resources for MASs, the event-triggered control (ETC) strategy that combines state-triggering and controller-triggering simultaneously is proposed. This approach significantly reduces the utilization of shared communication network resources compared to single-channel triggering mechanisms. However, the conventional backstepping control approach will be inapplicable due to the non-existence of differentiation for the virtual control signals caused by state-triggering. Moreover, it is challenging to analyze the system stability when employing the adaptive technique based on multi-channel triggering mechanisms to remove the effect of system uncertainty. Accordingly, a new multi-channel event-triggered consensus control strategy is cleverly designed utilizing partial information on controllers for continuous communication to solve the above difficulties as well as to achieve the following objectives: (1) All the closed-loop system variables are uniformly bounded. (2) The consensus tracking errors will converge to a compact set that can be made arbitrarily small by properly adjusting design parameters. Finally, the effectiveness ofthe proposed control scheme is demonstrated through simulation results.