Adaptive Fault-Tolerant H-Infinity Output Feedback Control for Lead–Wing Close Formation Flight

This paper investigates the attitude and position tracking control problem of the Lead–Wing close formation system with unknown multiplicative actuator faults. In close formation flight, the movement of the Wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is influenced by the vortex effects of the neighboring Lead UAV. This situation requires a modeling of the aerodynamic coupling vortex effects and linearization on the basis of optimal close formation geometry. Adaptive actuator fault parameters are identified by merging the improved unknown input observers, and adaptive laws with projection functions are presented for actuator fault tracking. The sufficient condition corresponding to the existence of unknown input observers is given. Then, an adaptive fault-tolerant H-infinity output feedback control scheme is developed to guarantee the asymptotic stability, H-infinity closed-loop system performance, and attitude and position tracking properties while the Lead UAV is being maneuvered. Simulation results of the Lead–Wing close formation flight validate the efficiency of the proposed fault-tolerant control algorithm.