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A system of fast moving quadcopters has a high risk of collisions with neighboring quadcopters or obstacles. The objective of this work is to develop a control strategy for collision and obstacle avoidance of multiple quadcopters. In this paper, the problem of distributed dynamic matrix control (DMC) for collision avoidance among a team of multiple quadcopters attempting to reach consensus in the horizontal plane and yaw direction (x,y$$ x,y $$, and ψ$$ \psi $$) is investigated. Violations of a predetermined safety radius generates output constraints on the DMC optimization function, which has not been dealt with in the literature. Different from past works, the proposed strategy can perform collision avoidance in the x$$ x $$, y$$ y $$, and z$$ z $$‐directions. In addition, logarithmic barrier functions are implemented as input rate constraints on the control actions. Extensive simulation studies for a team of quadcopters illustrate promising results of the proposed control strategy and case variations. In addition, DMC parameter effects on the system performance are studied, and a successful study for obstacle avoidance is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel distributed formation controller for general linear multi-agent systems with application to multiple quadcopters. First, a new locally computable state-estimate-based event-triggering communication condition is proposed for each agent. Then, the formation tracking problem is formulated as a stability analysis, controller gain and event-generator gain design problem of the closed-loop formation error dynamics. Sufficient conditions that guarantee the co-existence of a valid formation controller and an event-triggered communication mechanism are derived using a Lyapunov-based method and linear matrix inequality techniques. In addition, equivalent low (agent-sized) dimensional sufficient conditions are obtained to reduce the computational complexity. For the simulation conditions used in this research, the proposed estimate-based event-triggered communication mechanism generates less data communication instants when compared with traditional state-error-based mechanisms while still achieving similar control performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we address the distributed event-triggered leader–follower formation tracking control problem of general linear multiagent systems with a dynamic leader in sampled-data settings. A novel locally computable state-estimate-based event generator is established for each follower agent to regulate the interagent communication at each sampling instant. Then, we propose a distributed formation tracking protocol based on the triggered sampled information such that the formation tracking control problem can be formulated as a stability-analysis problem of the closed-loop formation error dynamics. The event generator and formation tracking controller gains can then be co-designed using the feasible linear matrix inequality conditions that are derived from Lyapunov-based stability-analysis methods that guarantee the ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop formation error dynamics. Finally, numerical simulations along with experiment implementations were conducted for a group of linearized unicycle-type mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the event-triggered containment control (CC) problem of multiagent systems with a directed graph, where the followers’ communication graph is an undirected graph. A novel event-triggered CC protocol is presented to schedule communications between agents, which depends on both local states and control inputs. Different from traditional approaches using broadcasts, a unique property of the proposed protocol is that it enables agent-to-agent data transmission. To do so, each communication link is associated with a specific local event. The estimated relative interagent states are transmitted over a specific link only when the related input-based event is detected. We develop sufficient conditions to solve CC problem under this protocol and extend it to the adaptive event-triggered protocol that does not require the global knowledge on the smallest positive eigenvalue of the Laplacian. For both protocols, we derive positive low bounds on the interevent time intervals generated by individual events, which eliminate the “Zeno phenomenon.” Feasibility of the proposed algorithm is verified by an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies an input-based triggering approach to investigate the secure consensus problem in multiagent systems under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The DoS attacks are based on the time-sequence fashion and occur aperiodically in an unknown attack strategy, which can usually damage the control channels executed by an intelligent adversary. A novel event-triggered control scheme on the basis of the relative interagent state is developed under the DoS attacks, by designing a link-based estimator to estimate the relative interagent state between intermitted communication instead of the absolute state. Compared with most of the existing work on the design of the triggering condition related to the state measurement error, the proposed triggering condition is designed based on the control input signal from the view of privacy protection, which can avoid continuous sampling for every agent. Besides, the attack frequency and attack duration of DoS attacks are analyzed and the secure consensus is reachable provided that the attack frequency and attack duration satisfy some certain conditions under the proposed control algorithm. “Zeno phenomenon” does not exhibit by proving that there exist different positive lower bounds corresponding to different link-based triggering conditions. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by a numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the consensus problem of multiagent systems with the input-based triggering condition. A model-based approach is first given to estimate the relative interagent states between intermittent communications instead of absolute states. A novel consensus protocol consisting of the relative interagent states is proposed for the consensus problem. Besides, compared with some results on the triggering condition consisting of state measurement error, a new triggering condition is constructed based on the control input. Then, the consensus protocol is executed by every agent in a fully distributed way, which has the advantage that the controller design is related to the number of agents instead of using global information. Moreover, the bounds of parameters of the controller and the triggering condition can be obtained by the proposed algorithm simultaneously, which depends on the total number of agents in multiagent networks. The proposed control scheme can ensure that states of all agents can achieve consensus. It is shown that “Zeno behavior” does not appear under the proposed algorithm. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the problem of distributed event-triggered pinning control for practical consensus of multiagent systems (MASs) with quantized communication based on a directed graph is investigated. The pinning control for practical consensus of MASs with uniform quantizer is first discussed. Then, in order to decrease communication load of interagent, the event-triggered quantized communication protocol is designed. The nonsmooth analysis and Gronwall’s inequality approach is used to guarantee the existence of a solution to the resulting closed-loop system. It is shown that practical consensus is reachable through the event-triggered control and converges to a consensus set. Moreover, “Zeno phenomenon” can be excluded. Finally, an example is given to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed new design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is to develop a novel distributed leader–follower algorithm for multi-agent systems in the event of stochastic communication link failure over the network. Bernoulli distribution is applied to represent the data dropout during operation while the data dropout properties of each communication links are independent from each other. Sufficient conditions for a stabilizing controller design are developed by using Lyapunov-based methodologies and Linear Matrix Inequality (LMIs) techniques. The stability condition is then decomposed into small robust stability conditions with the size of a single agent, provided that the interaction topology of the followers is an undirected graph, which leads to efficient solutions even in case that the number of agents is large and a high order system dynamics of the agent is considered. The main result is to ensure the mean square exponential stability of the overall system reaching consensus. The case of consecutive data losses in any of the communication links is also discussed in the same framework. Leader-following numerical simulations with a group of agents including quadcopters are successfully conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the novel consensus algorithm in this paper. The results show that the consensus achievement is incorporating the data loss probability; however a higher data loss rate may cause a longer time for agents to achieve consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]