Cooperative Online Learning for Multiagent System Control via Gaussian Processes with Event-Triggered Mechanism

In the realm of the cooperative control of multiagent systems (MASs) with unknown dynamics, Gaussian process (GP) regression is widely used to infer the uncertainties due to its modeling flexibility of nonlinear functions and the existence of a theoretical prediction error bound. Online learning, which involves incorporating newly acquired training data into GP models, promises to improve control performance by enhancing predictions during the operation. Therefore, this article investigates the online cooperative learning algorithm for MAS control. Moreover, an event-triggered data selection mechanism, inspired by the analysis of a centralized event-trigger (CET), is introduced to reduce the model update frequency and enhance the data efficiency. With the proposed learning-based control, the practical convergence of the MAS is validated with guaranteed tracking performance via the Lyapunov theory. Furthermore, the exclusion of the Zeno behavior for individual agents is shown. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed event-triggered online learning method is demonstrated in simulations.