Adaptive Event-Triggered Time-Varying Output Group Formation Containment Control of Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems

In this paper, a class of time-varying output group formation containment control problem of general linear heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs) is investigated under directed topology. The MAS is composed of a number of tracking leaders, formation leaders and followers, where two different types of leaders are used to provide reference trajectories for movement and to achieve certain formations, respectively. Firstly, compensators are designed whose states are estimations of tracking leaders, based on which, a controller is developed for each formation leader to accomplish the expected formation. Secondly, two event-triggered compensators are proposed for each follower to evaluate the state and formation information of the formation leaders in the same group, respectively. Subsequently, a control protocol is designed for each follower, utilizing the output information, to guide the output towards the convex hull generated by the formation leaders within the group. Next, the triggering sequence in this paper is decomposed into two sequences, and the inter-event intervals of these two triggering conditions are provided to rule out the Zeno behavior. Finally, a numerical simulation is introduced to confirm the validity of the proposed results.