Neural Network-Based Distributed Cooperative Learning Control for Multiagent Systems via Event-Triggered Communication

Event-based distributed cooperative neural learning control for nonlinear multiagent systems with time-varying output constraints

In practical engineering, many systems are required to operate under different constraint conditions due to considerations of system security. Violating these constraints conditions during operation may lead to performance degradation. Additionally, communication among agents is highly dependent on the network, which inevitably imposes a network burden on the control systems. To address these issues, this paper investigates the switching event-triggered distributed cooperative learning control issue for nonlinear multiagent systems with time-vary output constraints. An improved output-dependent universal barrier function with adjustable constraint boundaries is proposed, which can uniformly handle symmetric or asymmetric output constraints without changing the controller structure. Meanwhile, an improved switching event-triggered condition is designed based on neural networks (NNs) weight, which can allow the system to adaptively adjust the NNs weight update frequency according to the performance of the system, thereby saving communication resources. Furthermore, the Padé approximation technique is employed to address the input delay issue and simplify the controller design process. Using Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that the outputs of all followers converge to a neighborhood around the leader output without violating output constraints, and all signals in the closed-loop system remain ultimately bounded. At last, the availability of the presented approach can be verified through some simulation results.

Interleaved Periodic Event-Triggered Communications-Based Distributed Formation Control for Cooperative Unmanned Surface Vessels

This article addresses the distributed formation control issue of cooperative unmanned surface vessels (USVs) under interleaved periodic event-triggered communications. First, an adaptive event-based control protocol is designed, where the event-based neural network (NN) scheme is developed to compensate for uncertain model dynamics. Upon the designed control protocol, an interleaved periodic event-triggered mechanism (IPETM) is subsequently proposed to achieve the communication objective. Unlike the common continuous event-triggered methods and periodic event-triggered methods, in which multiple nodes are allowed to trigger their events at the same time, the proposed IPETM ensures that USVs detect their events at different times to avoid the simultaneous event triggering of different nodes. By this virtue, traffic jamming in common wireless environments can be prevented, such that potential communication delays and faults are naturally avoided. In addition, the event detecting instants of the presented IPETM are also discrete and periodic, such that it can be performed under low-computational frequencies. Through Lyapunov-based analysis, it is verified that all closed-loop signals can converge to an arbitrary small compact set with exponential convergence rates. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control scheme.

Event-Triggered-Based Distributed Consensus Tracking for Nonlinear Multiagent Systems With Quantization

In this article, an observer-based adaptive neural network (NN) event-triggered distributed consensus tracking problem is investigated for nonlinear multiagent systems with quantization. In the first place, the limited capacity of the communication channel between agents is considered. The event-trigger mechanism and dynamic uniform quantizers are set up to reduce information transmission. The next NN is utilized to handle the unknown nonlinear functions. Finally, in order to estimate the unmeasurable states, an NN-based state observer is designed for each agent by using a dynamic gain function. To settle the difficulty caused by the coupling effects of event-triggered conditions and the scaling function in dynamic uniform quantizers and observers, a distributed control protocol with estimated information of its neighbors is designed, which ensures distributed consensus tracking of the nonlinear multiagent systems without incurring the Zeno behavior. The effectiveness of the control protocol is illustrated by a simulation example.

Asymptotical Neuro-Adaptive Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems With a High Dimensional Leader and Directed Switching Topology

We study the asymptotical consensus problem for multi-agent systems (MASs) consisting of a high-dimensional leader and multiple followers with unknown nonlinear dynamics under directed switching topology by using a neural network (NN) adaptive control approach. First, we design an observer for each follower to reconstruct the states of the leader. Second, by using the idea of discontinuous control, we design a discontinuous consensus controller together with an NN adaptive law. Finally, by using the average dwell time (ADT) method and the Barbǎlat's lemma, we show that asymptotical neuroadaptive consensus can be achieved in the considered MAS if the ADT is larger than a positive threshold. Moreover, we study the asymptotical neuroadaptive consensus problem for MASs with intermittent topology. Finally, we perform two simulation examples to validate the obtained theoretical results. In contrast to the existing works, the asymptotical neuroadaptive consensus problem for MASs is firstly solved under directed switching topology.

Adaptive Neural Coordinated Control for Multiple Euler-Lagrange Systems With Periodic Event-Triggered Sampling

This article addresses the event-triggered coordinated control problem for multiple Euler-Lagrange systems subject to parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. Based on the event-triggered technique, a distributed coordinated control scheme is first proposed, where the neural network-based estimation method is incorporated to compensate for parameter uncertainties. Then, an input-based continuous event-triggered (CET) mechanism is developed to schedule the triggering instants, which ensures that the control command is activated only when some specific events occur. After that, by analyzing the possible finite-time escape behavior of the triggering function, the real-time data sampling and event monitoring requirement in the CET strategy is tactfully ruled out, and the CET policy is further transformed into a periodic event-triggered (PET) one. In doing so, each agent only needs to monitor the triggering function at the preset periodic sampling instants, and accordingly, frequent control updating is further relieved. Besides, a parameter selection criterion is provided to specify the relationship between the control performance and the sampling period. Finally, a numerical example of attitude synchronization for multiple satellites is performed to show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed coordinated control scheme.

Model-Based Self-Advising for Multi-Agent Learning

In multiagent learning, one of the main ways to improve learning performance is to ask for advice from another agent. Contemporary advising methods share a common limitation that a teacher agent can only advise a student agent if the teacher has experience with an identical state. However, in highly complex learning scenarios, such as autonomous driving, it is rare for two agents to experience exactly the same state, which makes the advice less of a learning aid and more of a one-time instruction. In these scenarios, with contemporary methods, agents do not really help each other learn, and the main outcome of their back and forth requests for advice is an exorbitant communications' overhead. In human interactions, teachers are often asked for advice on what to do in situations that students are personally unfamiliar with. In these, we generally draw from similar experiences to formulate advice. This inspired us to provide agents with the same ability when asked for advice on an unfamiliar state. Hence, we propose a model-based self-advising method that allows agents to train a model based on states similar to the state in question to inform its response. As a result, the advice given can not only be used to resolve the current dilemma but also many other similar situations that the student may come across in the future via self-advising. Compared with contemporary methods, our method brings a significant improvement in learning performance with much lower communication overheads.

Convex Temporal Convolutional Network-Based Distributed Cooperative Learning Control for Multiagent Systems

Due to its great efficiency, scalability, and inclusivity, distributed cooperative learning control has gotten a lot of attention. For complex uncertain multiagent systems, it is challenging to model the uncertainties and exploit the cooperative learning ability of the systems. To address these issues, we proposed a novel convex temporal convolutional network-based distributed cooperative learning control for uncertain discrete-time nonlinear multiagent systems. A new concept of using a convex temporal convolutional network (CTCNet) is proposed for estimating the uncertain agent dynamics in a cooperative way. Unlike previous methods that require adjustment of network weights for different control tasks, the proposed CTCNet can map the high-dimensional input-output space into a deep space spanned by basis features that represent the inherent properties of the system, so it has good robustness for different tasks. Consequently, to improve the control performance, a CTCNet-based distributed cooperative learning control method that shares learned knowledge through the communication topology among adaptive laws of CTCNet is proposed. Furthermore, the asymptotic convergence of system tracking errors to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of the origin is strictly proved. Finally, the simulation results are given to illustrate that our suggested method has higher control accuracy, stronger robustness, and anti-interference ability than the existing methods.

Adaptive Control of Uncertain Nonlinear Systems via Event-Triggered Communication and NN Learning

This article concentrates on adaptive tracking control of strict-feedback uncertain nonlinear systems with an event-based learning scheme. A novel neural network (NN) learning law is proposed to design the adaptive control scheme. The NN weights information driven by the prediction-error-based control process is intermittently transmitted in the event-triggered context to the NN learning law mainly for signal tracking. The online stored sampled data of NN driven by the tracking error are utilized in the event context to update the learning law. With the adaptive control and NN learning law updated via the event-triggered communication, the improvements of NN learning capability, tracking performance, and system computing resource saving are guaranteed. In addition, it is proved that the minimum time interval for triggering errors of the two types of events is bounded and the Zeno behavior is strictly excluded. Finally, simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and good performance of the proposed control method.

Reset Event-Triggered Adaptive Fuzzy Consensus for Nonlinear Fractional-Order Multiagent Systems With Actuator Faults

This article studies the problem of event-triggered adaptive fault-tolerant fuzzy output feedback consensus tracking control for nonlinear fractional-order multiagent systems with actuator failures under a directed graph. Considering the fact that the actual system works near the equilibrium point most of the time, a novel dynamic event-triggering strategy with the reset mechanism is proposed, where the dynamic threshold can be actively adjusted according to the preset conditions, so that the resource utilization can be further reduced. Based on an improved event-based consensus error, the state estimator about the derivative of reference trajectory and the adaptive law about the information of graph are constructed, which makes distributed consensus tracking control achieved without obtaining global information. Then, by introducing two adaptive compensating terms to deal with actuator failures and event-triggered measurement errors, it is shown in the sense of fractional-order stability criterion that tracking errors can converge to a compact set even if the fault parameters and modes are completely unknown. Finally, the correctness of the presented method is verified by a simulation example.

Event-Triggered Consensus Control of Nonlinear Strict Feedback Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper, we investigate the event-triggered consensus problems of nonlinear strict feedback MASs under directed graph. Based on the high-gain control technique, we firstly give a state-based event-triggered consensus algorithm and prove that Zeno behavior can be excluded. When the full state information is unavailable, a high-gain observer is given to estimate state information of each agent and an observer-based algorithm is developed. Finally, we give an example to verify the effectiveness of both state-based and observer-based event-triggered consensus algorithms.

Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Time-Varying Formation Control of Unmanned Airships With Limited Communication Ranges Against Input Saturation for Smart City Observation

This article investigates the distributed fault-tolerant time-varying formation control problem for multiple unmanned airships (UAs) against limited communication ranges and input saturation to achieve the safe observation of a smart city. To address the strongly nonlinear functions caused by the time-varying formation flight with limited communication ranges and bias faults, intelligent adaptive learning mechanisms are proposed by incorporating fuzzy neural networks. Moreover, Nussbaum functions are introduced to handle the input saturation and loss-of-effectiveness faults. The distinct features of the proposed control scheme are that time-varying formation flight, actuator faults including bias and loss-of-effectiveness faults, limited communication ranges, and input saturation are simultaneously considered. It is proven by Lyapunov stability analysis that all UAs can achieve a safe formation flight for the smart city observation even in the presence of actuator faults. Hardware-in-the-loop experiments with open-source Pixhawk autopilots are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Distributed Cooperative Learning Control of Uncertain Multiagent Systems With Prescribed Performance and Preserved Connectivity

For an uncertain multiagent system, distributed cooperative learning control exerting the learning capability of the control system in a cooperative way is one of the most important and challenging issues. This article aims to address this issue for an uncertain high-order nonlinear multiagent system with guaranteed transient performance and preserved initial connectivity under an undirected and static communication topology. The considered multiagent system has an identical structure and the uncertain agent dynamics are estimated by localized radial basis function (RBF) neural networks (NNs) in a cooperative way. The NN weight estimates are rigorously proven to converge to small neighborhoods of their common optimal values along the union of all agents' trajectories by a deterministic learning theory. Consequently, the associated uncertain dynamics can be locally accurately identified and can be stored and represented by constant RBF networks. Using the stored knowledge on identified system dynamics, an experience-based distributed controller is proposed to improve the control performance and reduce the computational burden. The theoretical results are demonstrated on an application to the formation control of a group of unmanned surface vehicles.

Application of Norm Optimal Iterative Learning Control to Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Monitoring Overhead Power System

Wind disturbances and noise severely affect Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) when monitoring and finding faults in overhead power lines. Accordingly, we propose repetitive learning as a new solution for the problem. In particular, the performance of Iterative Learning Control (ILC) that are based on optimal approaches are examined, namely (i) Gradient-based ILC and (ii) Norm Optimal ILC. When considering the repetitive nature of fault-finding tasks for electrical overhead power lines, this study develops, implements and evaluates optimal ILC algorithms for a UAV model. Moreover, we suggest attempting a learning gain variation on the standard optimal algorithms instead of heuristically selecting from the previous range. The results of both simulations and experiments of gradient-based norm optimal control reveal that the proposed ILC algorithm has not only contributed to good trajectory tracking, but also good convergence speed and the ability to cope with exogenous disturbances such as wind gusts.