Fixed-time Formation Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles With Disturbances

This paper presents a fixed-time formation control method for a set of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to uncertainties and actuator faults. By using Backstepping and fixed-time control theory, a formation control strategies is proposed, with which the UAVs can track the reference formation trajectory in fixed-time. To handle the formation tracking error constraints of the UAVs, we incorporate the Barrier Lyapunov function into control scheme. A fixed-time extended state observer is designed to estimate the compound disturbances that comprise environment disturbances, uncertainties and the actuator faults. Despite the influence of disturbances, the proposed formation control method can guarantee that the close-loop system is stable in fixed-time. Numerical simulation studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed formation control method.