Cluster Consensus Control for Second‐Order Multi‐Agent Systems: An Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Approach

ABSTRACT The paper is concerned with leader‐following cluster consensus control for second‐order multi‐agent systems (MAS) with non‐identical nonlinear dynamics and external disturbance. The communication topology of MAS is represented by a digraph. The purpose of the problem under consideration is to design an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller such that cluster consensus of the MAS is guaranteed while only information exchange between followers and communication from leaders to followers. First of all, the fuzzy logic theory is introduced to approximate the nonlinear function. An event‐triggered communication protocol is adopted over the MAS with hope to reduce the communication burden. Lyapnov stability theory is used to analyze the convergence of adaptive parameters and sliding mode surfaces. Based on this, some sufficient conditions with the restrictions on parameters are established in the framework of the MAS cluster consensus. Finally, a simulation example is presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed event‐triggered controller.