Event-Triggered Cooperative Exponential Practical Tracking for a Class of Higher-Order Uncertain Nonlinear Multiagent Systems

In this article, by utilizing the event-triggered control method, we research the cooperative exponential practical tracking problem for a class of higher-order uncertain nonlinear multiagent systems (NMASs). First, for each follower, a distributed event-triggered observer (ETO) is designed to estimate the states of the leader, in which the continuous-time states of its neighbors are not necessary. Thus, the communication resources can be saved. Second, by integrating the distributed ETO and the modified adaptive control technique, an adaptive control law that can be implemented in digital platforms and an event-triggered mechanism are designed to address our problem. Third, for the leader and all followers, the state tracking errors can converge exponentially to any small specified neighborhood of the origin at an arbitrarily fast specified convergence rate. Finally, our result is applied to multiple Van der Pol systems.