NN event-triggered finite-time consensus control for uncertain nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems with dead-zone input and actuator failures

This paper develops a Neural Network (NN) event-triggered finite-time consensus control method for uncertain nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) with dead-zone input and actuator failures. In practical applications, actuator failures would inevitably arise in MASs. And the time, pattern, and value of the failures are unknown. Besides, the actuators of MASs also suffer from dead-zone nonlinearity. No matter actuator failures or dead-zone input would dramatically affect the performance and stability of MASs. To address these issues, finite-time adaptive controllers capable of simultaneously compensating for actuator failures and dead-zone input are constructed by adopting the backstepping technology. Meanwhile, the NN control scheme is adopted to handle the unknown nonlinear dynamics of each agent. Furthermore, an event-triggered control mechanism is established that no longer requires continuous communication on the control network. Under the proposed control method, all followers achieve finite-time synchronization, irrespective of the presence of limited bandwidth, unknown failures, and dead-zone input. These results are demonstrated by simulations.