ABSTRACT In this paper, the event‐triggered (ET) distributed optimal formation control method is presented for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (QUAVs) with external disturbances based on an appointed time prescribed performance function (ATPPF), a multiplayer zero‐sum differential game (ZSDG), and a critic‐only adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm. First, an ATPPF is proposed to guarantee the formation tracking errors in the predefined regions at all times. Then, the distributed formation tracking control problem with disturbances is converted to a multiplayer ZSDG. Moreover, the solution of the ZSDG requires the solution to the Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Isaacs equations (HJIEs). To solve the HJIEs, a critic‐only ADP algorithm is proposed for each QUAV to approximate its optimal solution. Furthermore, an ET mechanism is proposed by combining the formation tracking error with the boundary of the ATPPF, and the Zeno behavior is effectively eliminated in the ET mechanism. Under the proposed control method, the uniformly ultimately bounded stability of the closed‐loop system is achieved via the Lyapunov method. Finally, simulation results are implemented on the QUAVs to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method.
Guo et al. (Wed,) studied this question.