Target Enclosing and Coverage Control for Quadrotors with Constraints and Time-Varying Delays: A Neural Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Formation Control Approach

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of formation fault-tolerant control of multiple quadrotors (QRs) for a mobile sensing oriented application. The QRs subject to faults, input saturation and time-varying delays can be controlled to perform a target-enclosing and covering task while guaranteeing the state constraints will not be exceeded. A distributed formation control scheme is proposed, using a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN)-based time-delay position controller and an adaptive fault-tolerant attitude controller. The Lyapunov–Krasovskii approach is used to analyze the time-varying delay. Barrier Lyapunov function is deployed to handle the prescribed constraints, and an auxiliary system combined with a command filter is designed to resolve the saturation problem. An RBFNN and adaptive estimators are deployed to provide estimates of disturbances, fault signals and uncertainties. It is proven that all the closed-loop signals are bounded under the proposed protocol, while the prescribed constraints will not be violated, which enhances the flight safety and QR formation’s applicability. Comparative simulations based on application scenarios further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Adaptive Robust Time-Varying Formation Control of Quadrotors under Switching Topologies: Theory and Experiment

“…Remark 2. In most practical applications, except for some special QRs such as racing drones, the roll and pitch attitude angles do not usually reach π 2 due to the constraints of mission payloads and operational quality requirements [49]. As a result, the maneuvering actions are relatively mild.…”

“…In [48], the distributed finite-time TVFC of multiple QRs with aperiodic sampled data was studied. In [49], the neural adaptive TVFC of multiple QRs with faults was studied in a practical application. However, only fixed topology was adopted in the results.…”