Fault-tolerant control for cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles formation via fuzzy logic

In this paper, we investigate the problem of fault tolerant for a group of multiple autonomous cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during execution their mission in a desired geometrical pattern. A decentralized linear model predictive control (LMPC) is designed and implemented on a team of cooperative UAVs to achieve the desired formation in the absence of faults (normal/fault-free cases). When faults occur in one or more of the UAVs, a fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) strategy is designed via fuzzy logic such that each UAV in the team will take its own decision in a decentralized manner, to reconfigure the formation of the whole team ensuring the execution of the required mission. The proposed controller respects the general formation constraints known as Reynolds rules of flocking during simulations. Our main contribution in this paper lays in the use of fuzzy logic control by the cooperative UAVs in taking the decision to solve the problem of formation reconfiguration for an autonomous team of UAVs in the presences of faults.