Event-Triggered Optimal Dynamic Formation of Heterogeneous Affine Nonlinear Multiagent Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on automatic control Vol. 66; no. 2; pp. 497 - 512
• Main Authors: Ma, Hong-Jun, Yang, Guang-Hong, Chen, Tongwen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-02-2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Control theory; Cost function; Distributed optimization; dynamic formation; event-triggered decision and control; heterogeneous agents; Multiagent systems; Nonlinear systems; Optimization; Reconfiguration; Servomotors; Symmetric matrices; Task analysis; Tracking errors; Trajectory; Vehicle dynamics
• ISSN: 0018-9286; 1558-2523
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2020.2983108

This article studies an optimal dynamic formation problem for heterogeneous affine nonlinear systems. The nonidenticality in agents and the requirement for dynamic spatial reconfiguration make it a challenging task to coordinate different types of agents to maintain an optimized formation shape. In an architecture of event-triggered decision and control, this article investigates how to fulfill dynamic formation by distributively optimizing a team cost function. The basic idea is to design a decision unit for each agent to generate an implicit trajectory as a servo signal, based on which a control unit is designed with a displacement-gradient-based law to achieve the desired local solution. Typical heterogeneous characteristics including different nonlinearities and nonidentical dimensions are dealt with in a unified framework. It is shown that with the proposed triggering mechanisms, the optimal dynamic formation problem can be solved by a distributed control law with only intermittent communication. In theory, the properties of convergence of trajectory tracking errors, optimality of the team solution, and Zeno-freeness of event-triggered mechanisms are proved. Two simulation examples are given to verify the proposed method.