Consensus control of multi-agent systems with deception attacks using event-triggered adaptive cognitive control

This paper presents a novel event-triggered adaptive cognitive control to address the consensus problem of multi-agent systems (MASs) with a Leader under deception attacks. By using the reinforcement learning, adaptive radial basis function (RBF) neural networks and sliding mode control , an adaptive cognitive control is developed. This control has two parts: Actor and Critic. The Actor is designed by using adaptive RBF neural networks and sliding mode control, named adaptive sliding mode control. It is used to control the agent. The Critic is constructed utilizing the adaptive RBF neural networks, to evaluate the control performance of the Actor. In addition, to reduce the communication cost, an event triggered mechanism is designed. The Lyapunov stability analysis shows that the proposed event-triggered adaptive cognitive control can ensure the stabilization of the MASs in case of deception attacks. Simulations are performed to validate the feasibility of the proposed event-triggered adaptive cognitive control, indicating that it can decrease the effects of deception attacks and ensure that all Followers can synchronize to the Leader. • An innovative adaptive cognitive control is presented by means of Actor–Critic​ reinforcement learning. The Actor is used for controlling the controlled plant, but the performance for the Actor is critiqued by the Critic. The collaboration between the Actor and the Critic can promote the control performance for the adaptive cognitive control. Furthermore, a distributed adaptive cognitive control is adapted to the consensus control of MASs subject to deception attacks. • The information gap is employed for quantitatively depicting the information uncertainties caused by deception attacks. • A distributed static event-triggered mechanism is formulated to enhance the efficiency of communication resources. Moreover, each Agent can manage private triggered instants by using its own event trigger. Some storages are designed for storing the states for Agents.