Adaptive Finite-Time Consensus Tracking Control for Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems: An Improved Tan-Type Nonlinear Mapping Function Method

This paper investigates the adaptive finite-time consensus tracking control problem for a class of nonlinear nonstrict-feedback multi-agent systems (MASs) with output constraints. Firstly, to deal with the output constraints problem, an improved tan-type nonlinear mapping (NM) function is presented for the first time. Then, the singularity problem that exists in finite-time control is successfully avoided by employing a novel switching function. A modified tracking error involving the dependent variable of the designed NM function is constructed to guarantee that the outputs of all agnets achieve consensus tracking simultaneously and satisfy the constraints requirement. In addition, a switching threshold event-triggered control (ETC) strategy is applied to design controller for each agent, which combines the advantages of fixed threshold strategy and relative threshold strategy, and saves system communication resources well. The developed distributed adaptive finite-time control protocol ensures that all the signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the consensus tracking control is achieved in finite time. Finally, the effectiveness of the designed control strategy is verified by a simulation experiment. Note to Practitioners—Due to the wide application of nonlinear MASs in practice, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) formation control, robots formation control and so on, the adaptive finite-time consensus tracking control problem for a class of nonlinear nonstrict-feedback MASs is studied in this paper. In practical applications, the practical fast finite-time strategy can effectively increase the system convergence, the NM method not only solves the output constraints problem well, but also overcomes the conservativeness of traditional barrier Lyapunov functions. Then, in order to reduce the communication burden of the nonlinear MASs, a switching threshold ETC is considered. In addition, the system model and backstepping technology used in this paper are general and practical.