Sampled-data observer based event-triggered leader-follower consensus for uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems☆

This paper addresses the event-triggered output feedback consensus problem for feedforward nonlinear multi-agent systems with a directed topology graph. To avoid continuous monitoring and communication among agents, the periodic sampled-based output information is adopted to construct the observer. The observer-based controller for every agent updates under a newly designed triggering mechanism, which relies on its output and the relative output information of its neighbour agents at sampling points. With the designed event-triggered control protocol, the leader-follower consensus is achieved and the Zeno behavior is excluded effectively. Moreover, the sampling period and state delay of the considered system can be arbitrary positive numbers. Finally, the consensus result is extended to a class of feedforward multi-agent systems with the system nonlinearities satisfying the increment ratio of an unbounded time-varying function. A simulation example with two cases is given to demonstrate the proposed event-triggered control protocols.