Adaptive formation control of nonlinear multi-agent systems with dynamic event-triggered communication

The problem of distributed formation control and dynamic event-triggered communication techniques for leader-following nonlinear multi-agent systems across a directed network is addressed in this research. Based on the internal dynamic variables, the dynamic event-triggering approach for a general class of nonlinear multi-agent systems is introduced. The our proposed approach differs from most of current triggering laws in that they include internal dynamic variables, which have significance in guaranteeing that the triggering time sequence exhibits no Zeno behavior. Moreover, some existing triggering laws are shown to be particular cases of the ones we propose. For the proposed adaptive distributed formation protocol, each agent uses only the local information and its neighbors’ ones i.e., fully distributed fashion. We proved that the leader-following formation problem can be indirectly solved through the stability of an equivalent dynamic system. The practical application of the proposed approach is finally demonstrated through the simulation and execution of a formation tracking design for unmanned aerial vehicles.