Distributed consensus of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics via adaptive intermittent control

The consensus problem is investigated for a class of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics on a fixed directed information network, where each agent is assumed to share information only with its neighbors on some disconnected time intervals. A novel adaptive intermittent control protocol is first introduced, where only intermittent relative local information is used. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory combined with the method of the adaptive control and intermittent control, some novel and simple consensus criteria are derived under a fixed strongly connected topology, it is proved that consensus can be reached if the measure of communication is larger than a threshold value. The results are then extended to consensus with a virtual leader where the underlying topology is not necessarily strong connected or contains a directed spanning tree. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.