Robust fault-tolerant cooperative control of multi-agent systems: A constructive design method

Abstract

This paper investigates the distributed cooperative controller design problem for multi-agent systems in the presence of actuator faults. Both the partial loss of actuator effectiveness and the actuator bias faults are considered. A constructive design method is presented to achieve the synchronization and/or tracking control of multi-agent systems. The control protocol for each agent consists of three modules: the actuator fault detection module, the nominal control module, and the auxiliary control module. The auxiliary control module is activated as soon as the actuator faults are detected. The control protocols are locally distributed in the sense that the control modules designed for each agent only require the information of itself and its neighbors. The loss of symmetry in the digraph Laplacian matrix is also considered. The analysis is suitable for the multi-agent systems with a general directed communication graph. The proposed fault-tolerant control schemes are applied in the formation control of multi-robot systems. Numerical simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed control methods.