Event-triggered leader-following formation control for multi-agent systems under communication faults: Application to a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles

The main contribution of this paper is the design of an event-triggered formation control for leader-following consensus in second-order multi-agent systems (MASs) under communication faults. All the agents must follow the trajectories of a virtual leader despite communication faults considered as smooth time-varying delays dependent on the distance between the agents. Linear matrix inequalities (LMIs)-based conditions are obtained to synthesize a controller gain that guarantees stability of the synchronization error. Based on the closed-loop system, an event-triggered mechanism is designed to reduce the control law update and information exchange in order to reduce energy consumption. The proposed approach is implemented in a real platform of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under communication faults. A comparison between a state-of-the-art technique and the proposed technique has been provided, demonstrating the performance improvement brought by the proposed approach.