Event-Triggered Consensus of Linear Multiagent Systems With Time-Varying Communication Delays

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Networked Systems
• Robotics

Background:

• Consensus control is crucial for coordinating multiagent systems.
• Existing methods often struggle with time-varying communication delays.
• Nonuniform delays can lead to system desynchronization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an event-triggered consensus strategy for linear multiagent systems.
• To address the challenge of general nonuniform time-varying communication delays.
• To ensure system stability and achieve consensus despite asynchronous communication.

Main Methods:

• Design of a novel periodic switching controller to manage nonuniform delays.
• Modeling the consensus error system as a periodic switching system.
• Application of Lyapunov stability theory and dwell-time analysis for stability derivation.

Main Results:

• The proposed controller effectively handles nonuniform time-varying communication delays.
• Exponential stability of the consensus error system is rigorously proven.
• The developed method ensures successful event-triggered consensus achievement.

Conclusions:

• The novel periodic switching controller provides a robust solution for event-triggered consensus.
• The method is effective even with complex, nonuniform communication delays.
• An illustrative example validates the practical applicability and effectiveness of the approach.