Event-triggered based adjustable containment control scheme design for multi-agent systems

Abstract

Abstract The traditional containment control problem uses a mapping method with a fixed communication topology to generate a set of reference signals for followers, which may lead to a situation where the position of the reference signal cannot be adjusted and causes collisions. Therefore, based on backstepping theory, we propose a novel containment control scheme to address this problem, where the generated reference signals can be adjusted arbitrarily. In particular, it is important to point out that an estimator is designed to guide the follower if the reference signal is not available, so that the collision problem is avoided. In addition, the computational complexity of the controller is also reduced and the communication resources are saved by introducing the command filters and event-triggered mechanism. It is proved that the tracking errors of the closed multi-agent systems are uniformly and ultimately bounded through Lyapunov theory. Finally, experimental simulations verify that the proposed control scheme is reasonable and effective. Furthermore, the proposed scheme provides a more flexible solution for containment control studies, especially for collision avoidance research of multi-agents.