Event-Triggered formation control for time-delayed discrete-Time multi-Agent system applied to multi-UAV formation flying.

•The event-triggered time-varying formation control problem for time-delayed discrete-time multi-agent systems is solved.•The proposed event-triggered algorithm enables a more reasonable allocation of communication resources and reduce the information transmissions frequency.•The theoretical algorithm is validated on the virtual simulation platform integrated Robot Operating System (ROS) and Gazebo.•The controller proposed is applied to multi-UAV formation flying based on the experimental platform with four practical quadrotors.