Distributed Adaptive Event-Triggered Least-Distance Formation Control for Nonlinear Multiagent Systems Under Switching-Activated Communication

This paper investigates the distributed adaptive event-triggered least-distance formation control problem for nonlinear multiagent systems (MASs) over switching digraphs via noncooperative game theory. First, distributed event-triggered estimators incorporating a switching-activated communication strategy are proposed to estimate the moving target and all agents’ decisions while reducing inter-agent communication. Based on the designed distributed estimators, a distributed time-varying Nash equilibrium (NE) seeking algorithm is established such that all agents’ decisions asymptotically reach the NE solution. Since high-order derivatives of the proposed distributed estimator states do not exist due to digraphs switching and event-triggering, the backstepping control design cannot be implemented. To overcome this difficulty, three-stage cascade filters are designed to provide sufficiently smooth signals. Then, based on the developed three-stage cascade filters, an adaptive event-triggered least-distance formation controller is proposed by the backstepping control technique. It is proved that the constructed formation control method can ensure that all agents achieve the least-distance formation, i.e., all agents’ outputs asymptotically reach a desired shape while minimizing the overall distance to the moving target. Finally, a simulation example on nonholonomic mobile robots is provided to illustrate the validity of the developed theoretical results.