Event-triggered consensus in nonlinear multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics and directed network topology

The event-triggered sampling control scheme is motivated by applications of embedded microprocessors with limited computation and storage resources. This paper proposes a novel framework for consensus of multiagent systems with inherent nonlinear dynamics in general directed networks by a distributed event-triggered control mechanism. A kind of high-performance event which effectively avoids continuous communications among agents is designed to analytically determine when an agent should sample its current state. Two kinds of general algebraic connectivity are introduced to respectively investigate the global consensus in strongly connected networks and a class of networks containing directed spanning trees. Sufficient conditions are derived to reach a global consensus based on algebraic graph, matrix theory, and Lyapunov control approach. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the correctness of the theoretical results.