A Hybrid Event-Triggered Approach to Consensus of Multiagent Systems With Disturbances

This article investigates the event-triggered consensus problem for multiagent systems (MAS) with external disturbances. A hybrid event-triggering mechanism (ETM) is proposed, which utilizes time regularization to force the minimum interevent time to be strictly positive, such that Zeno freeness is ensured in the presence of disturbances. Model-based control protocol is used to avoid continuous communication between neighboring agents. With the proposed hybrid ETM, the closed-loop MAS contains both flow dynamics and jumping dynamics, which cannot be described by the existing MAS models. By means of hybrid system framework and auxiliary variables, a hybrid model of the MAS is constructed to describe the flow dynamics and jumping dynamics. Based on this model, the Lypuanov-based consensus analysis and hybrid ETM design are developed, and the finite-gain $\mathcal {L}_2$ stability property is guaranteed. An example of spacecraft formation is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.