Output-feedback multiagent consensus with intermittent communication on directed graphs

"”This note studies output-feedback consensus of linear multiagent systems (MASs) on directed graphs. In view of limited communication resources in MAS tasks, the aim of this note is to reduce interagent communication. A fully distributed dynamic output-feedback protocol is proposed, where an event-triggered strategy is designed to determine when to exchange protocol states while a time-triggered one is designed to determine when to sample relative outputs. Design conditions are first established for strongly connected graphs, and then refined for directed graphs with a spanning tree. In contrast to the existing works, the merits of the proposed protocol are threefold: 1) it is applicable for directed graphs; 2) it relies on relative outputs, rather than absolute outputs or absolute/relative states; and 3) it only requires intermittent communication but no continuous monitoring of neighboring agents.