Hybrid event-triggered impulsive flocking control for multi-agent systems via pinning mechanism

This paper studies the leader-following flocking control problem of unmanned aerial vehi-cle (UAV) systems by integrating a hybrid impulsive framework, where the full exchange of information only occurs at each impulsive time instant. It is also shown that the overall stability can be achieved via impulses while the continuous dynamics remains destabi-lizing. Meanwhile, the even-triggered and pinning mechanisms are considered to further reduce control resource usage and transmission redundancy. Moreover, topology switch-ing and strong nonlinearity are taken into account for more practical application. Based on transmission topology structure, impulsive control theory, and Lyapunov based event -triggered strategy, some improved theorems are derived to guarantee convergence of the corresponding error dynamics without exhibiting Zeno behaviour. Compared with most ex-isting results on continuous or impulsive systems, the obtained stability criteria are more general as they are applicable to systems involving both delayed coupling feedback and delayed impulses. In addition, a novel approach using braking and gyroscopic forces is uti-lized for collision avoidance purposes. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illus-trate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis. (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc.