IoT-Oriented Cooperative Control of Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems Under Sampled-Data Output Interactions: Target Point Traction Method

Heterogeneous multiagent systems play a pivotal role in the Internet of Things (IoT) by enabling collaborative intelligence across diverse devices, yet they inherently struggle with discontinuous communication and inaccessible internal data across neighboring platforms. In this article, a novel protocol design method, named target point traction method, for heterogeneous multiagent systems is proposed. The method addresses protocol design for two types of heterogeneous multiagent systems, with a focus on consensus which is a fundamental issue in cooperative control. It aims to overcome collaborative challenges caused by communication limits, mainly the noninteraction of continuous and internal information. First, multiagent systems consisting of agents described by first- and second-order systems subject to disturbances are considered. Then, a more general heterogeneous nonlinear multiagent system is investigated, where the order number and nonlinearities of each agent can be different. The existence of the protocol that can accomplish the given cooperative control task for the investigated multiagent systems is discussed. The implementation of the protocols developed by the method only depends on the local sampled-data output interaction. Under the proposed control schemes, the system output evolution of each agent in the sampling instants is equivalent to the state evolution of a (perturbed) first-order differentiator, which can effectively reduce the conservatism in the selection of the sampling period. Finally, the validity of the developed method is verified by numerical examples.