Dynamic Event-Triggered Sliding-Mode Bipartite Consensus for Multi-Agent Systems With Unknown Dynamics

This paper addresses a data-driven sliding mode bipartite consensus issue for nonlinear discrete-time multi-agent systems with antagonistic interactions and limited communication resources. Initially, the signed graph theory is employed, and a combined measurement error function is formulated, transforming the bipartite consensus issue into a traditional consensus issue. An enhanced compact form dynamic linearization model is then established based on the input/output data and the formulated combined measurement error function. Moreover, a dynamic event-triggered function and a sliding-mode surface are designed, leading to the development of a fully distributed dynamic event-triggered sliding-mode bipartite consensus (DET-SMBC) approach. The proposed DET-SMBC approach is subsequently extended to a fully distributed dynamic event-triggered robust sliding-mode bipartite consensus (DET-RSMBC) scheme to improve robustness. The convergences of the tracking errors of both methods are rigorously deduced. Finally, simulation studies and hardware experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Note to Practitioners—In multi-agent systems, the applicability of existing methods can be reduced by some issues, such as uncertain dynamics models, unknown disturbances, and the limitation of communication bandwidth. These issues can influence existing methods’ usefulness and cause instability, so DET-SMBC and DET-RSMBC methods are proposed in this paper. Compared with existing results, identifying a precise dynamics model for each controlled plant is unnecessary, the necessity of high-performance hardware for data transmission is relieved, and the effects of unknown disturbances are reduced. Moreover, the proposed methods are applied to realistic servo motor systems to conduct speed bipartite consensus tasks well. It is noted that most complicated mechanisms are controlled by servo motors, so the proposed methods can be applied to more practical engineering systems.