Distributed Event-Triggered Output-Feedback Time-Varying Formation Fault-Tolerant Control for Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems

This paper studies the event-triggered time-varying formation control problem for nonlinear multi-agent systems with actuator faults. Based on the neural network approximation technique, a neural observer is constructed to estimate the unmeasured states of systems. Then, a distributed adaptive event-triggered time-varying formation control manner is proposed utilizing the intermittent estimated states information from the agent and its neighbors. To overcome the problem that estimated states triggering leads to virtual control laws is non-differentiable, a distributed continuous control scheme under regular output-feedback is designed firstly, upon which a distributed event-triggered controller is constructed by replacing estimated states with intermittent estimated ones. It is shown that the designed event-triggered output-feedback time-varying formation fault-tolerant controller can compensate for actuator faults, and all signals in closed-loop systems are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results of a practical example are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control manner.
Note to Practitioners
—Formation control has broad application prospects in modern military and civilian fields, such as combat aircraft flying formation, satellite formation, autonomous vehicle formation, etc. In formation control systems, when agents occur actuator faults, it may break the original formation and even cause collision between agents. As a result, the security of formation control systems is facing great challenges in practical engineering applications. On the other hand, communication bandwidth is limited in practical engineering systems, and how to make systems quickly form formation under the limited communication bandwidth has become a key topic. Inspired by the above discussions, a distributed state-triggered output-feedback time-varying formation fault-tolerant control scheme is designed in this paper, in which actuator faults are compensated by using adaptive technology. Meanwhile, to sufficiently save the usage of system communication resources, a dual-channel event-triggered mechanism is designed.