Team-based fixed-time containment control for multi-agent systems with disturbances

In this article, the containment control problem of multiagent systems (MASs) with active leaders under a directed communication graph is addressed. A novel pull-based event-triggered protocol combined with aperiodic sampled-data mechanism is first presented, where each agent merely updates controller at its own triggering instants. Under the proposed control protocols, the information is only exchanged and calculated at the aperiodic sampling instants, therefore, it can reduce communication congestion and save computing resources. Furthermore, the Zeno behavior is naturally excluded because the trigger instants are in the set of aperiodic sampled instants. By virtue of the algebraic graph theory and Lyapunov stability analysis, it is shown that the active leaders can reach their desired states predefined arbitrarily and all followers are driven to the convex hull formed by the leaders. Finally, an illustrative example is given to validate the theoretical results and emphasize the advantages of the proposed protocols.

This paper studies the containment control problem of linear multi-agent systems (MASs) subject to external disturbances, where the communication graph is a directed graph with the followers being undirected connections. In order to save communication costs and energy consumption, a distributed disturbance observer-based event-triggered controller is employed based on the relative outputs of neighboring followers. Compared with conventional controllers, our observer-based controller utilizes the relative outputs of neighboring followers at the same triggered instant. Furthermore, it is shown that Zeno behavior can be avoided. Finally, the validity of our proposed methodology is demonstrated by a simulation example.

This article studies the bipartite containment control problem for nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) with input quantization over a signed digraph. The design objective is to provide an appropriate distributed protocol such that the followers converge to a convex hull containing each leader's trajectory as well as its opposite trajectory different in sign. Based on a nonlinear decomposition approach of input quantization, an event-triggered control scheme is developed via backstepping technique. A fuzzy observer is constructed to estimate unmeasurable states. Moreover, the bipartite containment control scheme for nonlinear MASs is designed. It is demonstrated that all signals in the closed-loop system are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded and Zeno behavior is excluded. Finally, a simulation example is given to verify the validity of the designed method.

This paper investigates the distributed containment control problem for multi-agent systems with general linear dynamics under a directed graph. A new observer based on the relative outputs of neighboring agents is developed to estimate the relative states of neighbors which avoid designing the observer for the leaders in the existing literature. A matrix transformation is introduced to eliminate the coupling terms resulting from the simultaneous design of the observer and the controller gains. Then a sufficient condition on the existence of the observer-based controllers is presented in terms of strict linear matrix inequalities. Finally, a simulation example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design method.

Containment control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems

In this paper, the bipartite containment control problem of multi-agent systems (MASs) with unknown disturbances is studied. At first, a signed undirected graph is used to describe the Cooperative-Antagonistic interaction among the agents. Different from some conventional results of convergence in the infinite time domain, the control protocol proposed in this paper achieves the fixed-time convergence, and applies the fixed-time control and bipartite consensus to the containment control, making the proposed control protocol more practical. In addition, this paper also considers the existence of external disturbances and a novel fixed-time bipartite containment control protocol is proposed to eliminate them. Then, the stability analysis under the control protocol is completed by using the Lyapunov theory and mathematical theorem. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by some simulation examples.

This study applies a design method called linear quadratic regulator to tackle the containment control problem of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems over directed graphs. By solving an algebraic Riccati equation, the study establishes both necessary and sufficient conditions required to achieve consensus. The researchers introduce an innovative distributed control law for information transmission between leaders and followers. This control law allows the following agents to move within the convex hull formed by the navigation agent, and effectively enables them to converge quickly and then follow again by introducing position error adjustment parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated through a simulation example.

ABSTRACTThe event-based broadcasting containment control problem for both first-order and second-order multi-agent systems under directed topology is investigated. Based on certain event, each agent decides when to transmit its current states to its neighbours and the agents’ distributed control algorithms are based on these sampled state measurements, which can significantly decrease the number of the controllers’ updates. All the agents are divided into two groups, namely, the leaders and the followers. The formation control is introduced. The leaders exchange their information to converge to a formation. The followers utilise the information from both their leader neighbours and their follower neighbours and are driven to the convex hull of the leaders using the proposed control algorithms. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.

Sampled-data based containment control of continuous-time multi-agent systems with switching topology and time-delays

This paper considers the containment control of linear multi-agent system with weakly connected information topology. By defining the node-induced strongly connected subgraph as strong component, the agents contained in strong components with zero in-degree are called leaders and the others are called followers. Then, a sufficient and necessary condition is proposed for all agents to achieve containment by employing an observer-based protocol, where all followers finally converge to the convex hull formed by leaders and each strong component of leaders asymptotically achieve consensus. Since the number of leader agents in each strong component are always larger than one, the proposed scheme is more robust for the malfunction of leaders. Further, two LMIs are given to design the observer-based protocol. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the validity of the proposed results.

This article investigates a class of multi-agent systems (MASs) with known dynamics external disturbances, where the communication graph is directed, and the followers have undirected connections. To eliminate the impacts of external disturbance, the technologies of disturbance observer-based control are introduced into the containment control problems. Additionally, to save communication costs and energy consumption, a distributed disturbance observer-based event-triggered controller is employed to achieve containment control and reject disturbance. Furthermore, designing the event-triggered function using an exponential function is beneficial for a time-dependent term while ensuring the exclusion of Zeno behavior. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis.

Bipartite time-varying formation group containment control for multi-agent systems based on multi-layer network and semi-signed directed graph

Observer-based distributed adaptive fault-tolerant containment control of multi-agent systems with general linear dynamics

This paper investigates the containment control problem of multi-agent systems with semi-Markovian switching topologies. Different from the related works, this paper considers a more general case that the control inputs of leaders are nonzero, the sojourn time distributions of the semi-Markovian switching topologies are mode transition-dependent, and the states of agents are not measurable. Reduced-order observer-based control protocols are proposed, respectively, for two cases that the transition rates are completely known and partially unknown, which ensures that the containment of the multi-agent systems can be achieved in the mean square sense. Finally, simulation examples are given to illustrate the validity of the theoretical results.

This paper investigates the containment control problem for multi-agent systems based on the broadcast gossip algorithm, in which only one agent wakes up in the light of the asynchronous time model at each time and sends its information, and one part of the remaining agents get the message to update their states while the other part keep the states unchanged. We equivalently transform the algorithm into a mathematical model with the matrix-vector form, then conduct a detailed theoretical analysis for the mathematical model by utilizing tools including graph theory and stochastic matrix. Then, we establish a necessary and sufficient algebraic graph condition to ensure that every follower gradually enters the convex hull spanned by the leaders. Finally, we give a numerical example to argument the validity of theoretical result.