Distributed output‐feedback cooperative tracking control of non‐linear multi‐agent systems with unknown actuator failures

Abstract

The distributed fault-tolerant control (FTC) problem for a class of non-linear multi-agent systems, in the presence of uncertain disturbances and actuator failures is studied. The considered actuator failure model includes bias fault and loss of effectiveness fault, and the total number of failures is allowed to be infinite. By combining a kind of high-gain K-filters and backstepping technique, the effect of uncertain disturbances and actuator failures can be effectively compensated by an output-feedback FTC strategy. In addition, for each subsystem, an extra estimator is introduced to deal with the parametric uncertainties caused by its neighbours. Based on this, some additional uncertain information transmission among connected subsystems can be avoided. It is shown that all the signals of the closed-loop system are globally bounded and the subsystem output tracking error can converge to an arbitrarily small residual by adjusting the high gain parameters. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.