Distributed consensus of discrete time-varying linear multi-agent systems with event-triggered intermittent control

The consensus problem of discrete time-varying linear multi-agent systems (MASs) is studied in this paper. First, an event-triggered intermittent control (ETIC) protocol is designed, aided by a class of auxiliary functions. Under this protocol, some sufficient conditions for all agents to achieve consensus are established by constructing an error dynamical system and applying the Lyapunov function. Second, in order to further reduce the communication burden, an improved event triggered intermittent control (I-ETIC) strategy is presented, along with corresponding convergence analysis. Notably, the difference between the two control protocols lies in the fact that the former protocol only determines when to control or not based on the trigger conditions, while the latter, building upon this, designs new event trigger conditions for the update of the controller during the control stage. Finally, two numerical simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results

Optimized state feedback regulation of 3DOF helicopter system via extremum seeking

In this paper, an optimized state feedback regulation of a 3 degree of freedom (DOF) helicopter is designed via extremum seeking (ES) technique. Multi-parameter ES is applied to optimize the tracking performance via tuning State Vector Feedback with Integration of the Control Error (SVFBICE). Discrete multivariable version of ES is developed to minimize a cost function that measures the performance of the controller. The cost function is a function of the error between the actual and desired axis positions. The controller parameters are updated online as the optimization takes place. This method significantly decreases the time in obtaining optimal controller parameters. Simulations were conducted for the online optimization under both fixed and varying operating conditions. The results demonstrate the usefulness of using ES for preserving the maximum attainable performance

Cooperative Control of Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-agent systems have attracted great interest due to their potential applications in a variety of areas. In this dissertation, a nonlinear consensus algorithm is developed for networked Euler-Lagrange multi-agent systems. The proposed consensus algorithm guarantees that all agents can reach a common state in the workspace. Meanwhile, the external disturbances and structural uncertainties are fundamentally considered in the controller design. The robustness of the proposed consensus algorithm is then demonstrated in the stability analysis. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus algorithm. Next, a distributed leader-follower formation tracking controller is developed for networked nonlinear multi-agent systems. The dynamics of each agent are modeled by Euler-Lagrange equations, and all agents are guaranteed to track a desired time-varying trajectory in the presence of noise. The fault diagnosis strategy of the nonlinear multi-agent system is also investigated with the help of differential geometry tools. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through simulations. To further extend the application area of the multi-agent technique, a distributed robust controller is then developed for networked Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems. With the appearance of system uncertainties and external disturbances, a sampled-data feedback control protocol is carried out through the Lyapunov functional approach. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified by numerical simulations. Other than the robustness and sampled-data information exchange, this dissertation is also concerned with the event-triggered consensus problem for the Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems. Furthermore, the sufficient condition for the stochastic stabilization of the networked control system is proposed based on the Lyapunov functional method. Finally, simulation is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm. In this dissertation, the cooperative control of networked Euler-Lagrange systems and networked Lipschitz systems is investigated essentially with the assistance of nonlinear control theory and diverse controller design techniques. The main objective of this work is to propose realizable control algorithms for nonlinear multi-agent systems

Control law and state estimators design for multi-agent system with reduction of communications by event-triggered approach

A large amount of research work has been recently dedicated to the study of Multi-Agent System and cooperative control. Applications to mobile robots, like unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), satellites, or aircraft have been tackled to insure complex mission such as exploration or surveillance. However, cooperative tasking requires communication between agents, and for a large number of agents, the number of communication exchanges may lead to network saturation, increased delays or loss of transferred packets, from the interest in reducing them. In event-triggered strategy, a communication is broadcast when a condition, based on chosen parameters and some threshold, is fulfilled. The main difficulty consists in determining the communication triggering condition (CTC) that will ensure the completion of the task assigned to the MAS. In a distributed strategy, each agent maintains an estimate value of others agents state to replace missing information due to limited communication. This thesis focuses on the development of distributed control laws and estimators for multi-agent system to limit the number of communication by using event-triggered strategy in the presence of perturbation with two main topics, i.e. consensus and formation control. The first part addresses the problem of distributed event-triggered communications for consensus of a multi-agent system with both general linear dynamics and state perturbations. To decrease the amount of required communications, an accurate estimator of the agent states is introduced, coupled with an estimator of the estimation error, and adaptation of communication protocol. By taking into account the control input of the agents, the proposed estimator allows to obtain a consensus with fewer communications than those obtained by a reference method. The second part proposes a strategy to reduce the number of communications for displacement-based formation control while following a desired reference trajectory. Agent dynamics are described by Euler-Lagrange models with perturbations and uncertainties on the model parameters. Several estimator structures are proposed to rebuilt missing information. The proposed distributed communication triggering condition accounts for inter-agent displacements and the relative discrepancy between actual and estimated agent states. A single a priori trajectory has to be evaluated to follow the desired path. Effect of state perturbations on the formation and on the communications are analyzed. Finally, the proposed methods have been adapted to consider packet dropouts and communication delays. For both type

Synchronization of Complex-Valued Dynamical Networks

Dynamical networks (DNs) have been broadly applied to describe natural and human systems consisting of a large number of interactive individuals. Common examples include Internet, food webs, social networks, neural networks, etc. One of the crucial and significant collective behaviors of DNs is known as synchronization. In reality, synchronization phenomena may occur either inside a network or between two or more networks, which are called “inner synchronization” and “outer synchronization”, respectively. On the other hand, many real systems are more suitably characterized by complex-valued dynamical systems, such as quantum systems, complex Lorenz system, and complex-valued neural networks. The main focus of this thesis is on synchronization of complex-valued dynamical networks (CVDNs). In this thesis, we firstly design a delay-dependent pinning impulsive controller to study synchronization of time-delay CVDNs. By taking advantage of the Lyapunov function in the complex field, some delay-independent synchronization criteria of CVDNs are established, which generalizes some existing synchronization results. Then, by employing the Lyapunov functional in the complex field, several delay-dependent sufficient conditions on synchronization of CVDNs with various sizes of delays are constructed. Moreover, we study synchronization of CVDNs with time-varying delays under distributed impulsive controllers. By taking advantage of time-varying Lyapunov function/ functional in the complex domain, several synchronization criteria for CVDNs with time-varying delays are derived in terms of complex-valued linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Then, we propose a memory-based event-triggered impulsive control (ETIC) scheme with three levels of events in the complex field to investigate the synchronization problem of CVDNs with both discrete and distributed time delays, and we further consider an event-triggered pinning impulsive control (ETPIC) scheme combining the proposed ETIC and a pinning algorithm to study synchronization of time-delay CVDNs. Results show that the proposed ETIC scheme and ETPIC scheme can effectively synchronize CVDNs with the desired trajectory. Secondly, we study generalized outer synchronization of drive-response time-delayed CVDNs via hybrid control. A hybrid controller is proposed in the complex domain to construct response complex-valued networks. Some generalized outer synchronization criteria for drive-response CVDNs are established, which extend the existing generalized outer synchronization results to the complex field. Thirdly, we study the average-consensus problem of potential complex-valued multi-agent systems. A complex-variable hybrid consensus protocol is proposed, and time delays are taken into account in both the continuous-time protocol and the discrete-time protocol. Delay-dependent sufficient conditions are established to guarantee the proposed complex-variable hybrid consensus protocol can solve the average-consensus problem. Lastly, as a practical application for complex-valued networked systems, the synchronization problem of master-slave complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs) is studied via hybrid control and delayed ETPIC, respectively. We also investigate the state estimation problem of CVNNs by designing the adaptive impulsive observer in the complex field

Resilience-oriented control and communication framework for cyber-physical microgrids

Climate change drives the energy supply transition from traditional fossil fuel-based power generation to renewable energy resources. This transition has been widely recognised as one of the most significant developing pathways promoting the decarbonisation process toward a zero-carbon and sustainable society. Rapidly developing renewables gradually dominate energy systems and promote the current energy supply system towards decentralisation and digitisation. The manifestation of decentralisation is at massive dispatchable energy resources, while the digitisation features strong cohesion and coherence between electrical power technologies and information and communication technologies (ICT). Massive dispatchable physical devices and cyber components are interdependent and coupled tightly as a cyber-physical energy supply system, while this cyber-physical energy supply system currently faces an increase of extreme weather (e.g., earthquake, flooding) and cyber-contingencies (e.g., cyberattacks) in the frequency, intensity, and duration. Hence, one major challenge is to find an appropriate cyber-physical solution to accommodate increasing renewables while enhancing power supply resilience. The main focus of this thesis is to blend centralised and decentralised frameworks to propose a collaboratively centralised-and-decentralised resilient control framework for energy systems i.e., networked microgrids (MGs) that can operate optimally in the normal condition while can mitigate simultaneous cyber-physical contingencies in the extreme condition. To achieve this, we investigate the concept of "cyber-physical resilience" including four phases, namely prevention/upgrade, resistance, adaption/mitigation, and recovery. Throughout these stages, we tackle different cyber-physical challenges under the concept of microgrid ranging from a centralised-to-decentralised transitional control framework coping with cyber-physical out of service, a cyber-resilient distributed control methodology for networked MGs, a UAV assisted post-contingency cyber-physical service restoration, to a fast-convergent distributed dynamic state estimation algorithm for a class of interconnected systems.Open Acces