Distributed Fault-Tolerant Control for Multi-UAVs Based on Dynamic Event-Triggered Mechanism

This study develops the event-triggered fault-tolerant control scheme for the distributed multi-UAV system. Within the proposed framework, the fault observer is developed to identify and approximate unknown actuator faults in fixed-wing UAVs. By using the estimation results from the fault observer, a dynamic event-triggered mechanism (ETM) with an adaptive triggering threshold is introduced to adjust the communication and controller triggering frequencies. The proposed ETM can increase frequencies in response to fault occurrences. To address actuator faults in multi-UAV systems, a distributed FTC method is designed, integrating a dynamic event-triggering mechanism and a fault estimation technique. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out with a four-UAV formation following a virtual leader. Simulations confirm the control performance of the proposed distributed FTC approach and show the critical role of the dynamic ETM.