Fully Distributed Tracking Control for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems With a Noncooperative Leader Over Event-Triggered Communication

This article proposes a hierarchical control strategy, which consists of a task planning layer and a task execution layer, to solve the problem of tracking the trajectory of a noncooperative leader agent by heterogeneous follower agents under a directed communication topology. The noncooperative leader possesses escape capability due to its bounded input with an unknown bound: 1) the task planning layer is developed by building a distributed adaptive signal generator and a dynamic event-triggered communication mechanism and 2) the task execution layer is formulated by designing individual tracking controllers for each follower. This layered approach effectively handles challenges arising from heterogeneous dynamics. By introducing adaptive parameters, it eliminates reliance on the upper bound for the leader’s input while ensuring that the control strategy is fully distributed. The event-triggered mechanism saves communication resources effectively and does not require a large amount of additional computing resources to monitor the triggering condition. Furthermore, the results are extended to a more generalized nonlinear heterogeneous case in order to highlight the advantages offered by this hierarchical control strategy. Finally, the theoretical analysis and a simulation example, respectively, demonstrate and validate the correctness and validity of the theoretical results.