Output Feedback-Based Consensus for Nonlinear Multiagent Systems: The Event-Triggered Communication Strategy

The current investigation explores the leader-following consensus problem for nonlinear multiagent systems under the output feedback control mechanism and the event-triggered communication mechanism. Owing to the physical instrument constraints, a significant portion of the state variables is not readily available. Therefore, this article put forward a distributed event-based leader-following consensus protocol only using agents' relative output measurements and underlying neighbors. Furthermore, this article develops two event-triggered mechanisms simultaneously, one is the event-triggered communication mechanism in the sensor-to-controller channel, and another is the event-triggered controller update in the controller-to-actuator track. Besides that, it is proven that the developed event-triggered control protocol can settle the leader-following consensus problem of the nonlinear multiagent systems, and the Zeno behavior is excluded in both the channels. Finally, we perform two simulation examples to illustrate the efficacy of the obtained results.

Automated summary

This investigation focuses on the leader-following consensus problem of nonlinear multiagent systems using the output feedback control mechanism and the event-triggered communication mechanism. A distributed event-based leader-following consensus protocol is proposed, which only requires agents' relative output measurements and neighboring information. Two event-triggered mechanisms are developed simultaneously, one for communication and another for controller update. It is proven that the developed event-triggered control protocol can solve the leader-following consensus problem and avoid Zeno behavior. Simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.