Dynamic Event-Triggered Resilient Control of Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems Against Asynchronous DoS Attacks

This paper investigates dynamic event-triggered resilient formation control for nonlinear multi-agent systems under multi-channel Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Unlike existing resilient formation control strategies, which assume a unified attack model across all communication channels among followers under known system dynamics, which is not realistic. We propose a novel architecture for secure formation control to tackle the challenges posed by heterogeneous and uncertain dynamics, as well as distributed and asynchronous DoS attacks. Specifically, each communication channel, whether between the leader and followers, or among followers, may be independently and asynchronously attacked. In addition, a novel dynamic event-triggered mechanism that incorporates attack parameters is designed to mitigate the overuse of network bandwidth while avoiding the Zeno behavior. Notably, in comparison with conventional methods for heterogeneous cooperative systems, our approach eliminates the need for distributed observers to reconstruct the leader’s information, thus significantly reducing the transmission of additional variables and simplifying the system architecture. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms is verified through a practical example involving a multi-robot system. Note to Practitioners—This paper investigates dynamic event-triggered resilient formation control for nonlinear multi-agent systems under multi-channel Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. The proposed distributed resilient control algorithms can be applied to multiple ground vehicles, air vehicles, and underwater vehicles. Unlike existing resilient formation control strategies, which assume a unified attack model across all communication channels among followers under known system dynamics, which is not realistic. We propose a novel architecture for secure formation control to tackle the challenges posed by heterogeneous and uncertain dynamics, as well as distributed and asynchronous DoS attacks. Specifically, each communication channel, whether between the leader and followers, or among followers, may be independently and asynchronously attacked. In addition, a novel dynamic event-triggered mechanism that incorporates attack parameters is designed to mitigate the overuse of network bandwidth while avoiding the Zeno behavior. Notably, in comparison with conventional methods for heterogeneous cooperative systems, our approach eliminates the need for distributed observers to reconstruct the leaders information, thus significantly reducing the transmission of additional variables and simplifying the system architecture. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms is verified through a practical example involving a multi-robot system.