Individualized prescribed-performance output consensus for HMASs under communication faults via a novel event-triggered switching prescribed-time control

Source abstract

Abstract This paper investigates event-triggered bounded-gain prescribed-time output consensus with prescribed performance for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (HMASs) subjected to time-varying communication link faults. Unlike the traditional scalar-output prescribed-performance functions, an individualized prescribed-performance mechanism with asymmetric distributed bounds is introduced for multi-output tracking errors, where each output channel is constrained by its own performance envelope. By using a time base generator, a distributed observer with a piecewise static–dynamic event-triggered mechanism is constructed to achieve leader-state estimation at the prescribed time with a reduced communication burden while excluding instantaneous consecutive triggering events. To further avoid the peaking phenomenon caused by conventional singular time-varying gains in prescribed-time control, a bounded-gain prescribed-time control protocol is proposed. It is shown that the output tracking errors remain within the prescribed asymmetric performance bounds and converge exactly to zero at the prescribed time. Numerical comparisons demonstrate individualized transient-performance capability and trade-offs versus a bounded-gain prescribed-time method.