Variable Threshold-Oriented Event-Triggered Cluster Consensus for Groups of Multiagent Systems

This article investigates the leader–following cluster consensus for generic linear heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs). Unlike the existing research, a novel event-triggered (ET) control mechanism is designed and developed on the transmission side of the agents, over directed communication topologies, to reduce communication load. For this purpose, a variable threshold function as the fully distributed ET condition (ETC) is suggested, which provides a smooth transition and considers both maximum and minimum threshold levels for triggering. A relative-state feedback-based cluster consensus control protocol is designed by considering the cooperative and competitive interaction behavior of agents. Then, the convergence analysis is performed by utilizing the Lyapunov method. This work is then further extended for the ET observer-based output feedback cluster consensus problem. The proposed ETC naturally eliminates the Zeno behavior for each agent. In contrast to existing methods, a variable threshold-based ET scheme, a cooperation-competition network, and an elimination of Zeno behavior for both state-based and output-based methods have been considered for the leader–following cluster consensus. Finally, illustrative examples are used to validate the theoretical results.