Optimal Consensus Control Design for Multiagent Systems With Multiple Time Delay Using Adaptive Dynamic Programming

In this article, a novel data-based adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) method is presented to solve the optimal consensus tracking control problem for discrete-time (DT) multiagent systems (MASs) with multiple time delays. Necessary and sufficient conditions of the corresponding equivalent time-delay system are provided on the basis of the causal transformations. Benefitting from the construction of tracking error dynamics, the optimal tracking problem can be transformed into settling the Nash-equilibrium in the graphical game, which can be completed by solving the coupled Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) equations. An error estimator is introduced to construct the tracking error of the MASs only using the input and output (I/O) data. Therefore, the designed data-based ADP algorithm can minimize the cost functions and ensure the consensus of MASs without the knowledge of system dynamics. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.