Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Formation Control for Heterogeneous UAVs-UGVs Systems With Multiple Actuator Faults

This article investigates the fault-tolerant formation control problem for heterogeneous multiagent systems (MASs) consisting of quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and two-wheel driven unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in the presence of multiple actuator faults. The heterogeneous dynamic characteristics and the uncertainties of the control gain matrix generated by actuator faults, especially the sudden changes to system structure due to finite sequential faults, increase the difficulty of the formation control design. The dynamic models of UAVs and UGVs are first transformed to obtain the $XOY$ 2-D position formation systems of UAVs-UGVs and the $Z$-axis altitude system of UAVs. Then, a distributed adaptive direct fault compensation control strategy is designed for the position system of the UAVs-UGVs and the $Z$-axis altitude subsystems of UAVs, which can guarantee the expected formation structure under the influence of finite sequential faults. A simulation study based on the UAVs-UGVs cooperative systems is adopted to demonstrate the validity of the proposed fault compensation strategy.