Intermittent Event‐Triggered Consensus Control for Nonlinear Multi‐Agent Systems With External Disturbance

ABSTRACT The presence of inevitable factors such as cyber‐attacks and the limitations of sensing devices make it possible for communication interactions between multi‐agent systems (MASs) to be intermittent rather than continuous. In addition, control protocols may fail or be disabled due to sensor or actuator failures. Therefore, this paper investigates the consensus control problem in the intermittent control framework for nonlinear MASs with external disturbance where the controller cannot operate continuously. First, an intermittent sliding mode robust controller is proposed to guarantee that both the sliding mode variables and the system state converge within a fixed time while attenuating the influence of external disturbance. Second, to enhance efficiency and minimize communication overheads as well as energy consumption, an event‐triggered mechanism is integrated into the intermittent control paradigm. Additionally, the stability analysis of the control scheme is given according to the Lyapunov stability theory, and the event‐triggered control is guaranteed to be free from the occurrence of Zeno behavior. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by simulation comparison experiments.