Distributed fault‐tolerant control for over‐actuated multi‐agent systems with uncertain perturbations using control allocation

Abstract

AbstractThis paper proposes a distributed fault‐tolerant control for over‐actuated multi‐agent systems with uncertain perturbations and faults including partial loss of effectiveness or even complete failures. The entire distributed control law is divided into two parts that are the distributed observer and the decentralised controller with a hierarchical structure. The adaptive distributed observer estimates not only the leader's state, but also the leader's system matrix, which makes the whole distributed design more rigorous. For each over‐actuated subsystem, the control allocation based hierarchical control structure is used. The virtual control is developed based on adaptive optimal control approaches to cope with uncertain perturbations robustly. The model reference adaptive control is used to design the control allocator without the need for the fault detection and diagnosis module. The stability and robustness of the systems are rigorously demonstrated, and the feasibility and effectiveness of the control law are verified in simulations on the attitude dynamics system of spacecraft.