Distributed model based event-triggered control for synchronization of multi-agent systems

This paper investigates the problem of event-based control for the synchronization of networks of nonlinear dynamical agents. A distributed model based approach able to guarantee that all the agents converge to an adjustable synchronization region is derived. In such control scheme all the agents use a model of their neighborhood in order to generate triggering instants in which the local controller is updated and, if needed, local information is broadcasted to neighboring agents. The existence of a minimum lower bound between inter-event times is proven both for broadcasted information as well as for control signal updating, thus allowing implementation of the proposed strategy in applications where both the communication bandwidth and the maximum updating frequency of actuators are critical.