Event‐triggered adaptive consensus control of nonlinear multi‐agent systems with unknown control directions and actuator saturation

Abstract This article addresses the event‐triggered adaptive consensus control of nonlinear multi‐agent systems with unknown control direction and actuator saturation. A new robust adaptive control algorithm based on an event‐triggered mechanism is designed. The smooth Lipschitz function approximates the saturated nonlinear function, while the Nussbaum function handles unknown control directions and residual terms. The event‐triggered mechanism is designed to determine the time of communication, significantly reducing the communication burden. An additional estimator is utilized to deal with unknown parameters involved in neighbor dynamics and prevent information exchange to consistency errors between connected subsystems. The results show that all the signals of the closed‐loop system are uniformly bounded, and the consensus tracking error converges to a bounded set. Meanwhile, Zeno's behavior is eliminated. Simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed method.