Fixed-Time Fault-Tolerant Formation Control for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems With Parameter Uncertainties and Disturbances

Abstract

This paper investigates the fixed-time time-varying formation control problems for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) composed of multiple Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of actuator faults, parameter uncertainties, matched and mismatched disturbances. Besides achieving the desired formation configurations, each follower can also track the position trajectory produced by the virtual leader within fixed time simultaneously. The difference dynamic characteristics between the heterogeneous agents leads to unbalanced interaction of lumped uncertainties in the communication network, which increases the difficulty of collaborative control. To estimate the mismatched disturbances and lumped uncertainties, a fixed-time observer for each follower is designed, which can guarantee the estimation errors converge to the origin in fixed settling time. Subsequently, by utilizing the backstepping technique and the fixed-time stability theory, an observer-based distributed fixed-time formation controller for each follower in the X- Y axes and the observer-based decentralized fixed-time tracking controllers for follower-UAVs in the Z axes are presented, which are shown to be fixed-time stable even under the influence of actuator faults and mismatched disturbances. Moreover, the fixed-time results can ensure the convergence time is independent of initial conditions. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.