Aperiodic sampled-data consensus control for homogeneous and heterogeneous multi-agent systems: A looped-functional method

This paper examines the aperiodic sampled-data consensus control problems for nonlinear homogeneous and heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs). For homogeneous MASs, the consensus conditions, with and without time delays are derived by using a two-sided-looped functional. This less conservative approach takes full account of the information on the intervals delta(t)$$ \delta (t) $$ to delta(tk)$$ \delta \left({t}_k\right) $$ and delta(t)$$ \delta (t) $$ to delta(tk+1)$$ \delta \left({t}_{k+1}\right) $$. On this basis, two aperiodic sampled-data controllers are designed, and additional results on the estimate for the upper bound of the maximum allowable sampling interval are given as well. For heterogeneous MASs, the bounded consensus tracking criterion is derived based on the improved looped functional method. In addition, a corresponding heterogeneous sampled-data controller is designed for each follower to ensure that the consensus tracking error exponentially converges to a bounded ellipsoid region. Finally, three illustrative examples are provided to show the efficiency and superiority of the proposed results.