Periodic event‐triggered control for distributed networked multiagents with asynchronous communication: A predictive control approach

Summary This paper investigates the periodic event‐triggered control problem for distributed networked multiagent systems with interconnected nonlinear dynamics subject to asynchronous communication. A method of state trajectory estimation for the interconnected neighboring agents over each prediction horizon with guaranteed error bounds is addressed to handle the asynchronous communication. Based on it, a distributed robust model predictive control (MPC) is proposed with a distributed periodic event‐triggered scheme for each agent. According to this algorithm, each subsystem generates presumed state trajectories for all its upstream neighbors and computes its own control locally. By checking the designed triggering condition periodically, the optimization problem of MPC will be implemented and solved when the local error of the subsystem exceeds a specified threshold. Then, the optimized control input will be determined and applied until the next time instant when the triggering condition is invoked. Moreover, sufficient condition for ensuring feasibility of the designed algorithm is conducted, along with the analysis of asymptotic stabilization of the closed‐loop system. The illustrative example for a set of coupled Van der Pol oscillators is reported to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.