Output consensus of linear heterogeneous multi-agent systems with external disturbances by event-triggered strategy

Considering the individual differences in multi-agent systems, this paper investigates the distributed event-triggered sliding-mode output consensus problem of heterogeneous MASs with external disturbances. By designing a state-dependent threshold function, we propose a novel control protocol with the sliding-mode observers in a distributed manner. Under the proposed control strategy, the system can achieve the output consensus while the external disturbances are suppressed. Different from some existing works, the proposed event-triggered output consensus strategy has several distinguishing features, such as each agent does not need continuous or periodic communication with its neighbors for the controller updating and the triggering detection. It is also proved that events cannot be triggered infinitely in finite time interval (i.e. the Zeno behavior is not in existence). Finally, to illustrate the theoretical analysis, simulation example is given.