Fixed-Wing UAV Formation Robust Fault-Tolerant Control With Switching Topologies

Motivated by the demand for formation security, this paper studies the fault-tolerant control problem for fixed-wing UAV formation with switching topologies. Based on the application of fixed-wing UAV formation in scenarios involving various severities of faults, this article employs a leader-follower formation control method, focusing on addressing actuator faults, saturation, failures and the consequent communication faults. These challenges are approached as a problem of fault-tolerant control with switching topologies. To tackle these problems, the article delves into the impact of UAV network connections on nodes through neighboring interactions and proposes a novel fault-tolerant formation control method based on graph theory, observer theory, output regulation, and
$\mathrm {H}_{\infty} $
robust control theory, which is concluded as an algorithm. The method aims to effectively manage the complexities arising from fault occurrences and ensure the formation cooperative performance. Finally, the proposed control method’s effectiveness is demonstrated in a formation with one leader and four followers through numerical simulations, with a comparative analysis against an alternative method. A formation security schema is developed to provide an application scenario of the proposed method for different kinds of fixed-wing UAV formations.