Fault-tolerant Formation Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Bearing Measurement

This article studies the bearing-based distributed formation control problem of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under environment disturbance and actuator faults. The desired formation configuration is characterized by the leader-first follower (LFF) structure and a series of bearing constraints. To attain the formation tracking objective, the environmental disturbances and actuator faults are consolidated into a lumped uncertainty framework. This uncertainty is then estimated via a fixed-time observer method. Subsequently, a bearing-based distributed control protocol is developed, leveraging both the estimation and inter-agent measurements to steer agents towards the desired formation. Theoretical analysis guarantees the convergence of both the observer and controller, substantiating the efficacy of the proposed methodology. To enhance the validation of the proposed control scheme's effectiveness, a numerical simulation of UAV swarm behavior is executed to corroborate the fault-tolerance capabilities embedded within the devised control strategy.