Distributed Adaptive Formation Tracking Control of Mobile Robots With Event-Triggered Communication and Denial-of-Service Attacks

This article focuses on distributed adaptive formation tracking control of mobile robots under event-triggered communication (ETC) and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Dynamic level of model for mobile robots and directed-communication graph condition are considered. To handle the constraint that only part of the robots can access full knowledge of the desired trajectories, distributed event-triggered based estimators are designed. Then, an adaptive tracking control scheme is designed for each robot by utilizing backstepping technique. By analyzing the effects of DoS attacks on ETC, a stability condition constraining the active and suspended durations for each attack period is provided, based on which all closed-loop signals are ensured to be locally uniformly bounded. Moreover, Zeno behaviors are excluded. Experimental results are presented to validate theoretical findings.

Automated summary

This article addresses the issue of distributed adaptive formation tracking control of mobile robots in the presence of event-triggered communication (ETC) and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. It considers the dynamic model of mobile robots and the directed-communication graph condition. Distributed event-triggered estimators are designed to handle the constraint of limited access to desired trajectory information. An adaptive tracking control scheme is then designed for each robot using the backstepping technique. The effects of DoS attacks on ETC are analyzed, and a stability condition is provided to ensure boundedness of all closed-loop signals and exclude Zeno behaviors. Experimental results validate the theoretical findings.