Fault-Tolerant Cooperative Control for Multiple UAVs Based on UDE and Model Following SMC ^⁎

This paper presents a fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) design approach with application to multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), where the outer-loop control and the inner-loop control are designed. By virtue of a proportional control, the outer-loop of the follower UAV is able to generate reference commands. Moreover, within the proposed FTCC context, the inner-loop control is designed by resorting to the uncertainty and disturbance estimator (UDE) and model following sliding mode control (SMC) techniques, such that the deleterious effects of failed actuators can be counteracted and the safety of the cooperative flight can be ensured. The effectiveness of the developed FTCC scheme is illustrated by the numerical simulations of UAVs cooperative flight.