Multi-UAVs Formation Fault-Tolerant Control Based on the Adaptive Backstepping Approach

The open issue of fault-tolerant control for multi-UAVs formation is discussed in this study. A formation fault-tolerant control method based on the adaptive backstepping approach is developed to quickly form the original formation under actuator faults of the multi-UAVs. The formation is consisted of three UAVs to form a regular triangular formation and a virtual leader is embedded in the geometric center. The tracking error model of each UAV is created by applying the guiding technique. The communication connection among UAVs is determined based on the knowledge of graph theory. Fault parameters are estimated by the adaptive law based on discontinuous projection operator. The multi-UAVs formation fault-tolerant control law is obtained by combining with the backstepping approach. On the basis of the Lyapunov stability theory, the multi-UAVs formation fault-tolerant control system is stable. Finally, the results are shown that the UAVs can keep the required formation flight in the event of actuator faults.