Event-Triggered Model-Free Adaptive Formation Constrained Control for Nonlinear Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems

This article aims to address the formation control issue of the unknown nonaffine nonlinear heterogeneous multiagent system (MAS) considering formation tracking accuracy and computational cost. A novel dynamic prescribed boundary-based event-triggered mechanism is proposed first to flexibly adjust the emphasis on these two indicators, and applied to data modeling and controller design simultaneously to reduce their computational cost. On one hand, an observer-based pseudo gradient estimation algorithm is designed under event-triggered framework for model reconfiguration with only input/output data of system rather than mathematical dynamics. On the other hand, an event-triggered constrained control strategy is developed with several modules to cope with complex scenarios. Concretely, a data-driven anti-windup compensator is designed in case of input constraint, and an improved prescribed performance-based fractional order terminal sliding mode controller is explored for enhancement of the formation tracking accuracy and robustness of the controlled MAS with rigorous stability analysis. Both numerical simulation and hard-in-the-loop experiment on distributed energy storage systems are performed to attest the efficacy of the proposed formation control strategy.