Finite-Time Fault-Tolerant Consensus of UAVs: A Switching Event-Triggered Fuzzy Control Scheme

In finite-time consensus tracking (FCT) missions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), faults in aircraft actuators are crucial factors causing tracking precision degradation. In order to solve this problem, this paper develops a fuzzy fault-tolerant cooperative control scheme for UAVs to achieve FCT missions with predefined precision. Compared to existing results, the settling time formulation approach of consensus errors is significantly simplified, which facilitates operators to preset the settling time. Then a switching event-triggered mechanism is designed to flexibly change the transmission frequency of control signals, enabling the limited communication resources of UAVs to be reasonably consumed before and after the settling time. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that all signals of systems are bounded, and consensus errors can achieve prescribed precision in a finite time. Moreover, Zeno behavior is excluded. Finally, a simulation study demonstrates the efficiency and feasibility of the designed control scheme under various uncertainties. Note to Practitioners—In the existing FCT control schemes for UAVs, the formulation approaches of settling time depend on the structure of the communication network and the initial states of the aircraft, which hampers these schemes implemented in large-scale UAVs control tasks. How to effectively simplify the formulation approach of settling time has crucial practical significance and research value. In addition, since the communication bandwidth of UAVs is limited, the existing control strategies introduce event-triggered mechanisms to decrease the communication burden. However, adopting a single event-triggered mechanism cannot flexibly change the transmission frequency of control signals, which may make the limited communication resources fail to be reasonably consumed before and after the settling time. In order to solve the above problems, this paper develops a switching event-triggered FCT control scheme for UAVs, where the designed trigger mechanism can flexibly change the transmission frequency of control signals. Meanwhile, the settling time can be directly formulated following the wishes of operators.