Robust adaptive consensus tracking for higher‐order multi‐agent uncertain systems with nonlinear dynamics via distributed intermittent communication protocol

This paper considers the robust adaptive consensus tracking for higher‐order multi‐agent uncertain systems with nonlinear dynamics via distributed intermittent communication protocol. The main contribution of this work is solving the robust consensus tracking problem without the assumption that the topology among followers is strongly connected and fixed. The focus is the problem of actuator with occasional failure inputs and communication resources constraints. A novel distributed intermittent communication framework is proposed via adaptive approach. In this framework, the underlying communication topologies switch among several directed graphs with a limited directed spanning tree rooted at a leader agent. Furthermore, by introducing a strategy of actuator fault compensation inputs, a combination of robust consensus tracking protocol is designed by the different adaptive feedback controllers. It is proved that the robust adaptive consensus tracking can be achieved by using local states information of neighboring agents if the communication retention rate condition is satisfied. Two examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.