Adaptive fault-tolerant formation robust control for UAV–UGV systems with communication failures

This study addresses the distributed adaptive robust formation control problem for heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MASs) composed of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), subject to communication link failures, unknown system nonlinearities, and uncertain external disturbances. Based on the local state information of individual agents, a dedicated adaptive formation control protocol is constructed for cooperative UAV–UGV heterogeneous systems. The proposed strategy enables all follower agents to accurately track the dynamic trajectory of a virtual leader and achieve the predefined formation configuration, even in the presence of communication failures, unknown model nonlinearities, and complex external perturbations. The convergence performance of the distributed formation tracking control is rigorously proven via Lyapunov theory. Extensive simulation results further validate that the heterogeneous UAV–UGV MASs can maintain the desired formation configuration under the multiple adverse operational conditions, with tracking errors asymptotically converging to zero.