Distributed Event-Triggered Cooperative Output Regulation for Multiagent Systems

The cooperative output regulation problem of heterogeneous nonlinear multiagent systems is investigated by using the distributed event-triggered control. One of the main challenges in solving this problem is removing the restrictions imposed on the exosystem matrix while avoiding using global information. To address this challenge, a distributed event-triggered observer is proposed for each agent to estimate the upper bound of the norm of the exosystem matrix, based on which all agents can obtain the same upper bound in finite time. In particular, two types of distributed event-triggered observers are designed to estimate the exosystem matrix and the exosystem state. Meanwhile, with a clock-like variable being incorporated into the event-triggered mechanism, the existence of a positive minimum interevent time can be guaranteed for each agent. Furthermore, external disturbances with known dynamics can be compensated effectively by the proposed adaptive controllers. A numerical example is finally given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control technique.