Disturbance rejection cooperative control for nonlinear multi-agent systems based on an event-triggered prescribed-time strategy

This paper addresses the cooperative control problem of nonlinear multi-agent systems under disturbances via the proposal of an event-triggered prescribed-time control framework. First, a prescribed-time distributed observer (PTDO) based on the communication topology accurately estimates the leader's state and generates appropriate and accurate reference commands for each follower. Second, a prescribed-time lumped disturbance observer (PTLDO) is developed to achieve rapid estimation of external disturbances, which provides effective feedforward compensation and thereby significantly enhances the dynamic and static performance as well as the robustness of the closed-loop system. Third, an event-triggered prescribed-time controller (ETPTC) is constructed with a switching-threshold-based event-triggering mechanism (ETM) to determine control update instants. This mechanism effectively reduces redundant updates, lowering communication overhead and computational load while ensuring the desired control performance. Finally, prescribed-time stability analysis is conducted based on Lyapunov theory, and simulation results fully confirm the overall effectiveness of the proposed strategy.