Dynamic Event-Triggered Communication-Based Adaptive Consensus Tracking of Uncertain Nonlinear Multiagent Systems in Pure-Feedback Form

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating a dynamic event-triggered communication-based adaptive distributed consensus control problem for a class of uncertain pure-feedback nonlinear multiagent systems with limited communication resources. The nonaffine nonlinear functions of multiagent systems are assumed to be unknown and heterogeneous, and intermittent inter-agent communication is considered to occur within a directed network. A novel adaptive distributed dynamic surface control strategy using neural networks is developed to manage non-differentiable virtual control laws associated with the intermittent communication between agents with uncertain nonaffine nonlinear parts. The key contribution of this research is the derivation of dynamic event-triggering conditions using distributed tracking errors to efficiently adjust interevent times, while ensuring the consensus tracking performance and robustness against unexpected external disturbances. Compared with the existing static event-triggered communication approach, the proposed controller can alleviate the communication burden among agents. Using technical lemmas, it is shown that all signals of the considered system are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded, and Zeno behavior is strictly excluded. Comparative simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic eventtriggered control approach.INDEX TERMS Distributed consensus tracking, dynamic event-triggered inter-agent communication, dynamic surface control, neural networks, uncertain pure-feedback nonlinear systems.