Fault‐Tolerant Time‐Varying Formation Tracking for Multi‐Agent Systems With Varying Number of Agents and Mixed Cyber Attacks

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a fault‐tolerant time‐varying formation tracking control scheme for second‐order multi‐agent systems with varying numbers of agents and mixed cyber attacks. Initially, compared to the current failure model, a distributed failure model based on fault characteristics has been established. Subsequently, the cyber attack models following different rules are embedded into the system to reduce their impact. Then we use the topological structure segmentation method (TSSM) to decouple and derive the closed‐loop system state equations under mixed network attacks. Furthermore, topological structure uncertainty is employed to depict the variations in network topology. A pulse‐time‐correlated average Lyapunov function is designed to obtain sufficient conditions for guaranteed formation error convergence and boundedness of all closed‐loop signals. After this, control gains are iteratively computed using iterative linear matrix inequalities. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is validated through a set of numerical examples and software‐in‐the‐loop (SITL) experiments based on the XTdrone simulation platform.