Fault-tolerant consensus and fault estimation for uncertain multi-agent systems

This paper investigates fault-tolerant consensus and fault estimation problems for Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) subject to actuator faults, external disturbances, and model uncertainties. Considering information exchange among agents, we propose a novel distributed state observer with adjustable parameters (AP-DSO), which can simultaneously estimate system states and actuator faults in MASs. The observer structure improves estimation performance in terms of the H_∞ performance index and provides additional design flexibility. Based on the fault estimates provided by the AP-DSO, we then develop a novel distributed fault-tolerant cooperative controller (DFTCC) using output feedback. The DFTCC is designed to ensure that the system can achieve the consensus tracking task even in the presence of actuator faults, external disturbances, and uncertainties. The DFTCC comprises a reference controller, a cooperative controller, and a fault-tolerant controller. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed AP-DSO and DFTCC schemes.