This paper addresses the distributed formation control problem of a networked multi-agent system (MAS) subject to limited communication resources. First, a dynamic event-triggered communication mechanism (DECM) is developed to schedule inter-agent communication such that some unnecessary data exchanges among agents can be reduced so as to achieve better resource efficiency. Different from most of the existing event-triggered communication mechanisms, wherein threshold parameters are fixed all the time, the threshold parameter in the developed event triggering condition is dynamically adjustable in accordance with a dynamic rule. It is numerically shown that the proposed DECM can achieve a better tradeoff between reducing inter-agent communication frequency and preserving an expected formation than some existing ones. Second, an event-triggered formation protocol is delicately proposed by using only locally triggered sampled data in a distributed manner. Based on the formation protocol, it is shown that the state formation control problem is cast into an asymptotic stability problem of a reduced-order closed-loop system. Then, criteria for designing desired formation protocol and communication mechanism are derived. Finally, the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through a comparative study in multirobot formation control.

Distributed Formation Control of Networked Multi-Agent Systems Using a Dynamic Event-Triggered Communication Mechanism

A networked control system (NCS) is a control system which involves a communication network. In NCSs, the continuous-time measurement is usually sampled and quantized before transmission. Then, the measurement is transmitted to the remote controller via the communication channel, during which the signal may be delayed, lost or even sometimes not allowed for transmission due to the communication or energy constraints. In recent years, the modeling, analysis and synthesis of networked control systems (NCSs) have received great attention, which leads to a large number of publications. This paper attempts to present an overview of recent advances and unify them in a framework of network-induced issues such as signal sampling, data quantization, communication delay, packet dropouts, medium access constraints, channel fading and power constraint, and present respective solution approaches to each of these issues. We draw some conclusions and highlight future research directions in end.

Analysis and synthesis of networked control systems: A survey of recent advances and challenges.

Network-based modelling and dynamic output feedback control for unmanned marine vehicles in network environments

This paper is concerned with the guaranteed cost control problem for a class of Markov jump discrete-time neural networks (NNs) with event-triggered mechanism, asynchronous jumping, and fading channels. The Markov jump NNs are introduced to be close to reality, where the modes of the NNs and guaranteed cost controller are determined by two mutually independent Markov chains. The asynchronous phenomenon is considered, which increases the difficulty of designing required mode-dependent controller. The event-triggered mechanism is designed by comparing the relative measurement error with the last triggered state at the process of data transmission, which is used to eliminate dispensable transmission and reduce the networked energy consumption. In addition, the signal fading is considered for the effect of signal reflection and shadow in wireless networks, which is modeled by the novel Rice fading models. Some novel sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee that the closed-loop system reaches a specified cost value under the designed jumping state feedback control law in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, some simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Event-Triggered Asynchronous Guaranteed Cost Control for Markov Jump Discrete-Time Neural Networks With Distributed Delay and Channel Fading

This paper is concerned with the problem of vertical attitude estimation of a two-degree-of-freedom quarter-car suspension system by designing a distributed filtering network, where several distributed filters estimate vehicle heave motion cooperatively under consideration of external disturbance, network channel noises, and measurement error. The sampled data are transmitted through wireless networks. In order to reduce network traffic load and save communication resources, a novel periodic event-triggered sampling scheme is proposed, under which data are transmitted only when the proposed triggering condition is violated. Codesign of event-triggered and distributed filters is derived to guarantee well $H_{\infty }$ robustness to the system noises considered above. Finally, the experiments are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed filtering system.

Event-Based Distributed $H_{\infty }$ Filtering Networks of 2-DOF Quarter-Car Suspension Systems

This paper focuses on the $H_{\infty }$ fault detection (FD) problem for spring-mass systems (SMSs) over networks with distributed state delays, random packet losses, sensor saturation as well as multiplicative noises via unreliable communication channels. The output measurements are affected by sensor saturation which is described by sector-nonlinearities. The multiplicative noises are described as a form of Gaussian white noises multiplied by the states. A series of stochastic variables are introduced to describe the randomly occurring distributed state delays. Random packet losses are also introduced in unreliable communications. The purpose of this paper is to design an FD filter such that: 1) The FD dynamic system is exponentially stable in the mean square. 2) The error between the fault signal and the residual signal is controlled to the minimum. 3) The optimal $H_{\infty }$ filtering performance index is achieved. A sufficient condition for the FD filter design is derived in terms of the solution to a linear matrix inequality (LMI). When the LMI has a feasible solution, the explicit parameters of the desired FD filter can be obtained. Finally, a simulation experiment is illustrated to show the effectiveness and application of the designed method.

Ge Guo

Papers

Event-Based Distributed $H_{\infty }$ Filtering Networks of 2-DOF Quarter-Car Suspension Systems

$H_{\infty }$ Fault Detection for Networked Mechanical Spring-Mass Systems With Incomplete Information

H∞ fault detection filtering for mechanical spring-mass systems over networked systems with incomplete information