Distributed adaptive barrier function-based integral sliding mode consensus control of multi-agent systems

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Robotics
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Multi-agent systems require robust control for consensus and formation tasks.
• Existing methods often struggle with unknown disturbances and controller gain tuning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design distributed adaptive control protocols for leader-follower consensus and time-varying formation problems.
• To address uncertain linear dynamics and unknown bounded disturbances in multi-agent systems.
• To reduce control chattering and avoid gain overestimation.

Main Methods:

• Development of projection operator-based adaptive control protocols.
• Implementation of an integral sliding mode-based robust control strategy.
• Design of a barrier function-based adaptive integral sliding-mode controller to adjust discontinuous control gains.

Main Results:

• The proposed control technique ensures convergence of disagreement variables to a predefined neighborhood of zero.
• Lyapunov-based stability proofs confirm convergence for consensus and formation control.
• Numerical examples validate the effectiveness of the developed protocols.

Conclusions:

• The novel adaptive control protocols effectively achieve leader-follower consensus and time-varying formations in multi-agent systems.
• The barrier function approach successfully mitigates chattering and improves control performance.
• The findings offer a robust solution for complex multi-agent coordination problems.