Fractional-order follower observer design for tracking consensus in second-order leader multi-agent systems: Periodic sampled-based event-triggered control

This paper investigates the tracking consensus problem for the second-order leader systems by designing fractional-order observer, where a periodic sampled-based data event-triggered control is employed. In order to track the position information of leader, observers for followers are designed by fractional-order system, where only the relative position information is available. Furthermore, in the process of observers design, a sampled-based event-triggered strategy is proposed so that observers use the event-triggered sampled-data, to reduce the overall load of the network. In our proposed event-triggered strategy, the event detection only works at every sampling time instant which determines whether the sampled-data should be discarded or used. Under this control strategy, the Zeno-behavior is absolutely excluded since the minimum of inter-event times is inherently lower bounded by one sampling period. It is found that the followers can track state of the leader if fractional-order observers are appropriately designed and relevant parameters are properly selected. By using the generalized Nyquist stability criterion, a necessary and sufficient condition for the observer tracking consensus of the second-order leader systems is derived. The results show that the real and imaginary parts of the eigenvalues of the augmented Laplacian matrix, and fractional-order α of observer play a vital role in reaching consensus.     

Input-to-state stability of impulsive inertial memristive neural networks with time-varying delayed

The property of input-to-state stability (ISS) of inertial memristor-based neural networks with impulsive effects is studied. Firstly, according to the characteristics of memristor and inertial neural networks, the inertial memristor-based neural networks are built. Secondly, based on the impulsive control theory, the average impulsive interval approach, Halanay differential inequality, Lyapunov method and comparison property, some sufficient conditions ensuring ISS of the inertial memristor-based neural networks under impulsive controller are derived. In this paper, we consider two types of impulse, stabilizing impulses and destabilizing impulses. When the inertial memristor-based neural networks are originally not ISS, by choosing a suitable lower bound of the average impulsive interval, the stabilizing impulses can be used to stabilize the inertial memristor-based neural networks. On the contrary, the inertial memristor-based neural networks are originally ISS, by restricting the upper bound of the average impulsive interval, the ISS of inertial memristor-based neural networks with destabilizing impulses can be ensured. Finally, numerical results are presented to illustrate the main results.     

Stochastic consensus of discrete-time second-order multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time delays

We study the consensus control of discrete-time second-order multi-agents systems with time delays and multiplicative noises, where the consensus protocol is designed by both the local relative position measurements and each agent’s absolute velocity. Due to the existence of time delays and multiplicative noises, the classical methods for deterministic models with time delays cannot work. In this paper, we apply stochastic stability theorem of discrete-time stochastic delay equations to find some explicit sufficient conditions for both mean square and almost sure consensus. It is proven that for any given noise intensities and time delays, the second-order multi-agent consensus can be achieved by choosing appropriate control gains in the relative position measurement and absolute velocity, respectively. Numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocols as well as the theoretical results.     

Leaderless and leader-following consensus of linear multi-agent systems with distributed event-triggered estimators

This paper considers the event-triggered leaderless and leader-following consensus problems for linear multi-agent systems. By introducing event-triggered estimators, two novel control schemes are proposed. Different from the existing event-triggered controllers, which rely on the Fiedler eigenvalue of Laplacian matrix, the developed controllers only use the information from neighboring agents. Meanwhile, the adaptive trigger parameters are designed in the event-triggered mechanisms to improve the self-regulation ability of the event-triggered estimators. In addition, the leaderless consensus and the leader-following consensus can be achieved under the corresponding control protocols. Finally, two simulation examples are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed control protocols.     

Leader-following consensus of multi-agent systems with limited data rate

This paper investigates the leader-following consensus problem of time-invariant linear multi-agent systems with limited data rate. Based on the idea of assigning a priority level for each agent of the concerned multi-agent system, a novel distributed control law has been proposed. The proposed control law has two distinctive advantages. That is, it is fully distributed in the sense that it does not rely on the eigenvalues of the Laplace matrix associated with the topology. Moreover, the required data rate is independent of the number of agents and remains small even if the number of the agents in multi-agent systems is large. An example is finally given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

Event-triggered decentralized output-feedback control for interconnected nonlinear systems with input quantization

In this paper, the event-triggered decentralized control problem for interconnected nonlinear systems with input quantization is investigated. A state observer is constructed to estimate the unmeasurable states, and the state-dependent interconnections are accommodated by presenting some smooth functions. Then by employing backstepping technique and neural networks (NNs) approximation capability, a novel decentralized output feedback control strategy and an event-triggered mechanism are designed simultaneously. It is proved through Lyapunov theory that the closed-loop system is stable and the tracking property of all subsystems is guaranteed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is illustrated by an example.     

Distributed fault detection for nonlinear multi-agent systems under fixed-time observer

This paper mainly investigates the fault detection problem for nonlinear multi-agent systems with actuator faults. For fault detection, a fixed-time observer is proposed by employing auxiliary variable received from neighbor agents. Then, with the aid of the observer, a residual vector is introduced by the auxiliary variable to detect the faults occurring on any followers, and each observer can estimate the whole state of followers. Moreover, the convergence time is dependent on the parameters of the designed observer and independent of initial condition of system state. Finally, the theoretical result is verified by a simulation example.     

Consensus of first-order discrete-time multi-agent systems with time delays

This paper mainly considers the consensus for first-order discrete-time multi-agent systems w.r.t. two key parameters, the step size T and the delay τ. First, the consensus is recast into the concurrent stability for a series of trinomials. Then, for each associated trinomial, we derive a necessary and sufficient stability condition, based on proving the two invariance properties for the asymptotic behavior of the critical unitary roots. As a result, the exhaustive consensus region in the $T?\tau$ parameter space (i.e., the parameter set such that the multi-agent system reaches a consensus iff T and τ belong to that set) is determined. Furthermore, we show that the obtained result also applies to systems with diverse input delays, through an extra sufficient consensus condition. Finally, two illustrative examples are presented.     

Adaptive disturbance attenuation for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems: A double-gain nonlinear observer method

This paper is concerned with the problem of adaptive disturbance attenuation for a class of nonlinear systems. The traditional adaptive methods are almost impossible to compensate the time-varying unknown disturbance by designing parameter adaptive laws without a priori knowledge about the bounds of external disturbances. To solve the problem, a new strategy is proposed by constructing an augmented system where the external disturbance is considered as another component of the augmented state vector. Based on this, a double-gain nonlinear observer is employed to estimate the state of the augmented nonlinear system. Further, an output feedback control strategy is designed, and it is proved that the proposed strategy ensures that all the signals are bounded and the tracking error exponentially converges to an adjustable compact set. Finally, an example is performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme.     

Novel event-triggered filter design for nonlinear networked control systems

This paper investigates the problem of event-triggered filter design for nonlinear networked control systems (NCSs) in the framework of interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy systems. A novel IT2 fuzzy filter for ensuring asymptotic stability and H_∞ performance of filtering error system is proposed, where the premise variables are different from those of the fuzzy model. Attention is focused on solving the problem of event-triggered filter design subject to parameter uncertainties, data quantization, and communication delay in a unified frame. It is shown that the proposed event-triggered filter design communication mechanism for IT2 fuzzy NCSs has the advantage of the existing event-triggered approaches to reduce the utilization of limited network resources and provides flexibility in balancing the tracking error and the utilization of network resources. Finally, simulation example is given to validate the advantages of the presented results.     

Global consensus tracking of discrete-time saturated networked systems via nonlinear feedback laws

This paper revisits the coordinated tracking of networked systems in the presence of input saturation. For discrete-time networked systems with high-order integrator typed dynamics and input saturation, nonlinear feedback laws are constructed and then sufficient conditions are established to guarantee the global consensus tracking of the systems. Finally, numerical simulations are given to support the theoretical results.     

Sampled observer-based adaptive output feedback fault-tolerant control for a class of strict-feedback nonlinear systems

This paper studies the sampled outputs-based adaptive fault-tolerant control problem for a class of strict-feedback uncertain nonlinear systems, where the nonlinear functions are allowed to include the unmeasured system states. Within the framework, a sampled output observer is introduced to jointly estimate the system states and parameters. By combining the estimated states and the supervisory switching strategy, an adaptive fault-tolerant controller is designed to achieve the desirable tracking performance. By using Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that all the signals of the closed-loop systems are bounded and the tracking error converges to an adjustable neighbourhood of the origin eventually both in the fault free and faulty cases. Especially, if the outputs are available all the time, the proposed output feedback fault-tolerant control method can ensure the tracking error satisfy the prescribed performance bounds regardless of the faults. Finally, two examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

State and unknown input estimations for discrete-time switched linear systems with average dwell time

In this paper, the problem of state and unknown input estimations for a class of discrete-time switched linear systems with average dwell time switching is investigated. First, a proportional integral observer with an exponential H_∞ performance is constructed to estimate the system state and unknown input simultaneously. Second, both of the observability and the stability of the estimation error system are analyzed, then the derivation of the observer gain matrices is transformed into the calculation of linear matrix inequalities. Third, the obtained results are extended to the systems with output disturbances. Finally, two simulation examples are provided to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Adaptive fault-tolerant control for a class of nonlinear multi-agent systems with actuator faults

This paper considers the distributed adaptive fault-tolerant control problem for linear multi-agent systems with matched unknown nonlinear functions and actuator bias faults. By using fuzzy logic systems to approximate the unknown nonlinear function and constructing a local observer to estimate the states, an effective distributed adaptive fault-tolerant controller is developed. Furthermore, different from the traditional method to estimate the weight matrix, only the weight vector needs to be estimated by exchanging the order of weight vectors and fuzzy basis functions in the fuzzy logic systems. In contrast to the existing results, the assumption that the dimensions of input vector and output vector are equal is removed. In addition, it is proved that the proposed control protocol guarantees all signals in the closed-loop systems are bounded and all agents converge to the leader with bounded residual errors. Finally, simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Adaptive synchronization of multi-agent systems via variable impulsive control

This paper mainly focuses on the adaptive synchronization problem of multi-agent systems via distributed impulsive control method. Different from the existing investigations of impulsive synchronization with fixed time impulsive inputs, the proposed distributed variable impulsive protocol allows that the impulsive inputs are chosen within a time period (namely impulsive time window) which can be described by the distances of the left (right) endpoints or the centers between two adjacent impulsive time windows. Obviously, this kind of flexible control scheme is more effective in practical systems (especially for the complex environment with physical restrictions). Moreover, the proposed adaptive control technique is helpful to solve the problem with uncertain system parameters. By means of Lyapunov stability theory, impulsive differential equations and adaptive control technique, three sufficient impulsive consensus conditions are given to realize the synchronization of a class of multi-agent nonlinear systems. Finally, two numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the validity of the theoretical analysis.     

Impulsive control for passivity and exponential synchronization of coupled neural networks with multiple weights

This paper investigates the passivity and synchronization problems for two classes of multiple weighted coupled neural networks (MWCNNs) with or without time delays. Firstly, by utilizing an impulsive control strategy and some inequality techniques, several passivity criteria for MWCNNs with diverse dimensions of output and input are established. Then, based on the Lyapunov functional, some sufficient conditions to ensure the synchronization of MWCNNs via impulsive control are derived. In addition, combined with the comparison principle and the impulsive delay differential inequality, the global exponential synchronization of MWCNNs with time-varying delays is considered under impulsive control. Finally, two numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.     

Viable immersion and invariance control for a class of nonlinear systems and its application to aero-engines

This paper presents a novel approach to stabilize a class of nonlinear systems with state constraints. The motivation behind this study is the need to develop a stabilizing state feedback controller that does not require the knowledge of Lyapunov function and can regulate the states to the equilibrium while meeting the constraints. By using an integration of two relatively new tools: immersion and invariance (I&I) theory and viability theory, a sufficient condition for stability and stabilizability of a general nonlinear affine system with state constraints is derived; Then, the related results are exploited to stabilize a class of nonlinear system in feedback form and with state constraints represented by inequalities and the viable I&I stabilizing state feedback controller is obtained constructively. Further, an application to a nonlinear aero-engine model with the temperature constraint is given to illustrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, a comparative simulation is presented, highlighting the advantages of the viable I&I controller.     

General value iteration based single network approach for constrained optimal controller design of partially-unknown continuous-time nonlinear systems

In this paper, a novel iterative approximate dynamic programming scheme is proposed by introducing the learning mechanism of value iteration (VI) to solve the constrained optimal control problem for CT affine nonlinear systems with utilizing only one neural network. The idea is to show the feasibility of introducing the VI learning mechanism to solve for the constrained optimal control problem from a theoretical point of view, and thus the initial admissible control can be avoided compared with most existing works based on policy iteration (PI). Meanwhile, the initial condition of the proposed VI based method can be more general than the traditional VI method which requires the initial value function to be a zero function. A general analytical method is proposed to demonstrate the convergence property. To simplify the architecture, only one critic neural network is adopted to approximate the iterative value function while implementing the proposed method. At last, two simulation examples are proposed to validate the theoretical results.     

Containment control for second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with aperiodically intermittent position measurements

In some real systems, the intermittent communications and the inaccurate velocity measurements are usually inevitable. To overcome these two communication limitations, this article aims at investigating the containment control problem for a class of second-order multi-agent systems with inherent nonlinear dynamics and aperiodically intermittent position measurements. Under the case that the velocity information is unavailable, a distributed filter is introduced for each second-order follower. Based on the distributed filter, a novel intermittent containment control protocol without velocity measurements is designed. Some sufficient conditions are derived under the common assumption that only relative position measurements between the neighbouring agents are utilized intermittently, and these conditions ensure that the second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems can achieve containment control. Furthermore, some simpler containment conditions are obtained for multi-agent systems with double-integrator dynamics under aperiodically intermittent communications. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results.