Event-triggered control (ETC) is claimed to provide enormous reductions in sampling frequency when compared to periodic sampling, but little is formally known about its generated traffic. This work shows that ETC can exhibit very complex, even chaotic traffic, especially when the triggering condition is aggressive in reducing communications. First, we characterize limit traffic patterns by observing invariant lines and planes through the origin, as well as their attractivity. Then, we present abstraction-based methods to compute limit metrics, such as limit average and limit inferior inter-sample time (IST) of periodic ETC (PETC), with considerations to the robustness of such metrics, as well as measuring the emergence of chaos. The methodology and tools allow us to find ETC examples that provably outperform periodic sampling in terms of average IST. In particular for PETC, we prove that this requires aperiodic or chaotic traffic.
Event-triggered control (ETC) and time-triggered control (TTC), the classical concepts to determine the transmission instants for networked control systems, each come with drawbacks: It is difficult to tune ETC such that a certain bandwidth is respected, whereas TTC cannot adapt the sampling interval to the current state of the control system. In this article, we provide an overview over rollout ETC, a method aimed at reconciling the advantages of ETC and TTC. We unite two variants of rollout ETC under a common framework and present conditions for convergence and compliance with a predefined b…
This paper studies the optimal output consensus problem for a group of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems. Different from existing results, we aim at effective controllers for these high-order agents under both event-triggered control and event-triggered communication settings. We conduct an embedded design for the problem and constructively propose a multi-rate event-triggered controller with a set of applicable parameters. The proposed event-triggered rules are shown to be free of Zeno behaviors and can achieve the optimal output consensus goal for these high-order agents. A simulation…
In this paper, we study the problem of hybrid event-triggered control for a class of nonlinear time-delay systems. Using a Razumikhin-type input-to-state stability result for time-delay systems, we design an event-triggered control algorithm to stabilize the given time-delay system. In order to exclude Zeno behavior, we combine the impulsive control mechanism with our event-triggered strategy. In this sense, the proposed algorithm is a hybrid impulsive and event-triggered strategy. Sufficient conditions for the stabilization of the nonlinear systems with time delay are obtained by using Lyapun…
This work presents a rigorous analysis of the adverse effects of cyber-physical attacks on the performance of multi-agent consensus with event-triggered control protocols. It is shown how a strategic malicious attack on sensors and actuators can deceive the triggering condition of both state-based event-triggered mechanism and combinational state-based event-triggered mechanism, which are commonplace and widely used in the literature. More precisely, it is first shown that a deception attack in the case of combinational state-based event-triggered mechanism can result in a non-triggering misbe…
A framework for the event-triggered control synthesis under signal temporal logic (STL) tasks is proposed. In our previous work, a continuous-time feedback control law was designed, using the prescribed performance control technique, to satisfy STL tasks. We replace this continuous-time feedback control law by an event-triggered controller. The event-triggering mechanism is based on a maximum triggering interval and on a norm bound on the difference between the value of the current state and the value of the state at the last triggering instance. Simulations of a multi-agent system quantitativ…
This paper studies the tracking control problem of networked and quantized control systems under both multiple networks and event-triggered mechanisms. Multiple networks are to connect the plant and reference system with decentralized controllers to guarantee their information transmission, whereas event-triggered mechanisms are to reduce the information transmission via multiple networks. In this paper, all networks are independent and asynchronous and have local event-triggered mechanisms, which are based on local measurements and determine whether the local measurements need to be transmitt…
We study the problem of periodic event-triggered control of interconnected port-Hamiltonian systems subject to time-varying delays in their communication. In particular, we design a threshold parameter for the event-triggering condition, a sampling period, and a maximum allowable delay such that interconnected port-Hamiltonian control systems with periodic event-triggering mechanism under a time-delayed communication are able to achieve asymptotically stable behaviour. Simulation results are presented to validate the theory.
The paper considers the problem of multi-agent consensus in the presence of adversarial agents which may try to prevent and introduce undesired influence on the coordination among the regular agents. To our setting, we extend the so-called mean subsequence reduced algorithms with the aim to reduce the amount of communication via two measures: The agents exchange information in the form of ternary data at each transmission and moreover keep the frequency of data exchange low by employing self- and event-triggered communication. We will observe that in hostile environments with adversaries, the …
This paper investigates the communication strategy for second-order multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics. To save the scarce resources of communication channels, a novel event-triggered communication mechanism is designed without using continuous signals among the followers. To get rid of the centralized information depending on the spectrum of the Laplacian matrix, a consensus protocol with updated coupling gains and an event-triggered strategy of interagent communication with updated thresholds are presented. To minimize the impacts of noise, only relative positions among agents are e…
This work attempts to discuss the observability of linear time-invariant systems with event-triggered measurements. A new notion of observability, namely, $ε$-observability is defined with parameter $ε$, which relates to the worst-case performance of inferring the initial state based on not only the received measurement but also the implicit information in the event-triggering conditions at no-event instants. A criterion is developed to test the proposed $ε$-observability of discrete-time linear systems, based on which an iterative event-triggered set-membership observer is designed to evaluat…
Distributed state estimation is examined for a sensor network tasked with reconstructing a system's state through the use of a distributed and event-triggered observer. Each agent in the sensor network employs a deep neural network (DNN) to approximate the uncertain nonlinear dynamics of the system, which is trained using a multiple timescale approach. Specifically, the outer weights of each DNN are updated online using a Lyapunov-based gradient descent update law, while the inner weights and biases are trained offline using a supervised learning method and collected input-output data. The obs…
It is well known that the employed triggering scheme has great impact on the control performance when control loops operate under scarce communication resources. Various practical and simulative works have demonstrated the potential of event-triggered control to reduce communication while providing a similar performance level when compared to time-triggered control. For non-cooperative networked control systems, analytical performance comparisons of time- and event-triggered control support this finding under certain assumptions. While being well-studied in the non-cooperative setting, it rema…
In previous work, linear time-invariant event-triggered control (ETC) systems were abstracted to finite-state systems that capture the original systems' sampling behaviour. It was shown that these abstractions can be employed for scheduling of communication traffic in networks of ETC loops. In this paper, we extend this framework to the class of nonlinear homogeneous systems, however adopting a different approach in a number of steps. Finally, we discuss how the proposed methodology could be extended to general nonlinear systems.
This paper presents an observer-based event-triggered boundary control strategy for a class of reaction-diffusion PDEs with Robin actuation. The observer only requires boundary measurements. The control approach consists of a backstepping output feedback boundary controller, derived using estimated states, and a dynamic triggering condition, which determines the time instants at which the control input needs to be updated. It is shown that under the proposed observer-based event-triggered boundary control approach, there is a minimal dwell-time between two triggering instants independent of in…
This paper addresses the output synchronization problem for heterogeneous nonlinear multi-agent systems with distributed event-based controllers. Employing the two-step synchronization process, we first outline the distributed event-triggered consensus controllers for linear reference models under a directed communication topology. It is further shown that the subsequent triggering instants are based on intermittent communication. Secondly, by using certain input-to-state stability (ISS) property, we design an event-triggered perturbed output regulation controller for each nonlinear multi-agen…
In the context of networked control systems, event-triggered control (ETC) has emerged as a major topic due to its alleged resource usage reduction capabilities. However, this is mainly supported by numerical simulations, and very little is formally known about the traffic generated by ETC. This work devises a method to estimate, and in some cases to determine exactly, the minimum average inter-sample time (MAIST) generated by periodic event-triggered control (PETC) of linear systems. The method involves abstracting the traffic model using a bisimulation refinement algorithm and finding the cy…
Self-triggered control is an improvement on event-triggered control methods. Unlike the latter, self-triggered control does not require monitoring the behavior of the system constantly. Instead, self-triggered algorithms predict the events at which the control law has to be updated before they happen, relying on system model and past information.\\ In this work, we present a self-triggered version of an event-triggered control method in which events are generated when a pseudo-Lyapunov function (PLF) associated with the system increases up to a certain limit. This approach has been shown to co…
We present an event-triggered observer design for linear time-invariant systems, where the measured output is sent to the observer only when a triggering condition is satisfied. We proceed by emulation and we first construct a continuous-time Luenberger observer. We then propose a dynamic rule to trigger transmissions, which only depends on the plant output and an auxiliary scalar state variable. The overall system is modeled as a hybrid system, for which a jump corresponds to an output transmission. We show that the proposed event-triggered observer guarantees global practical asymptotic stab…
Platoons of autonomous vehicles are being investigated as a way to increase road capacity and fuel efficiency. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is one approach to controlling platoons longitudinal dynamics, which requires wireless communication between vehicles. In the present paper we use a sliding mode observer to detect and estimate cyber-attacks threatening such wireless communication. In particular we prove stability of the observer and robustness of the detection threshold in the case of event-triggered communication, following a realistic Vehicle-to-Vehicle network protocol.
Decentralized Dynamic Event-triggered Output-feedback Control of Stochastic Non-triangular Interconnected Systems with Unknown Time-varying Sensor Sensitivity
In this paper, we present a model-based periodic event-triggered control mechanism for nonlinear continuous-time Networked Control Systems. A sampled-data prediction of the system behavior is used at the actuator to reduce the amount of required communication while maintaining a user-defined performance level. This prediction is based on a possibly inaccurate discretization of the nonlinear system dynamics and can be implemented on simple hardware. Nevertheless, guarantees for asymptotic stability and a user-defined performance level are given for the periodic event-triggered control (PETC) me…
Fully Distributed Event-Triggered Protocols for Linear Multi-Agent Networks
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University（北京大学工学院力学与工程科学系湍流国家重点实验室）
We provide a method to construct finite abstractions exactly bisimilar to linear systems under a modified periodic event-triggered control (PETC), when considering as output the inter-event times they generate. Assuming that the initial state lies on a known compact set, these finite-state models can exactly predict all sequences of sampling times until a specified Lyapunov sublevel set is reached. Based on these results, we provide a way to build tight models simulating the traffic of conventional PETC. These models allow computing tight bounds of the PETC average frequency and global exponen…
In an event-based scenario, the system decides when to update the actuators based on a real time triggering condition on the measured signals. This condition can be defined in various forms and varies depending on the system properties and design problem. This paper proposes a framework to design the triggering condition while keeping Lp performance within desired limits. Our general framework captures several existing state-based triggering rules as a special case, and can achieve the performance objectives while reducing transmissions. Indeed, this general structure is shown to enlarge the m…
We study the platoon control of vehicles with third-order nonlinear dynamics under the constant spacing policy. We consider a vehicle model with parameter uncertainties and external disturbances and propose a distributed control law based on an event-triggered extended state observer (ESO). First, an event-triggered ESO is designed to estimate the unmodeled dynamics in the vehicle model. Then based on the estimate of the unmodeled dynamics, a distributed control law is designed by using a modified dynamic surface control method. The control law of each follower vehicle only uses the informatio…
This paper proposes an event-triggered sliding mode control (SMC) scheme combined with a backstepping algorithm for control of 2-DOF humanoid's lower-limb powered by Series elastic actuator (SEA). First, the modelling process for the lower-limb system is implemented by using the Euler-Lagrange theory. With the obtained dynamical equations of lower-limb, the model of the SEA is achieved in both mechanical and electrical perspectives. Then, the event-triggered SMC approach is utilized to ensure the system's stability and eliminate the effect of bounded external disturbance. Next, some assumption…
