Fault-tolerant formation control of multiple UAVs in the presence of actuator faults

In order to counteract actuator faults in formation flight of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this paper presents a fault-tolerant formation control (FTFC) design methodology, in which the reference generator and the finite-time convergence of FTFC gains are explicitly considered. Feasible references in response to actuator faults can be generated by considering the health and mission conditions of an overall team of UAVs. Moreover, by applying an auxiliary integrated regressor matrix and vector method, FTFC gains can converge within a finite amount of time to facilitate the fault accommodation process. Thus, the negative effects resulting from failed actuators can be compensated by the healthy/redundant actuators in UAVs. Simulation studies of UAV formation flight are carried out to exemplify the effectiveness of this design approach.