Cooperative Fault Tolerant Tracking Control for Multiagent Systems: An Intermediate Estimator-Based Approach

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Distributed Systems
• Fault Tolerance

Background:

• Linear multiagent systems are crucial in various applications but susceptible to faults and disturbances.
• Observer-based control is essential for fault detection and isolation in these systems.
• Handling multiple simultaneous faults and mismatched disturbances presents a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a distributed fault tolerant tracking control protocol for linear multiagent systems.
• To address the challenges posed by multiple faults and mismatched disturbances.
• To ensure robust tracking performance despite system uncertainties.

Main Methods:

• A novel distributed intermediate estimator based fault tolerant tracking protocol is proposed.
• A projection technique is used to separate mismatched disturbances into matched and unmatched components.
• An intermediate estimator is constructed to estimate sensor faults and a combined signal.

Main Results:

• The proposed protocol effectively estimates sensor faults and a combined signal of leader input, process faults, and matched disturbances.
• The fault tolerant tracking protocol successfully eliminates the effects of the estimated combined signal.
• The impact of unmatched disturbances is attenuated by adjusting system parameters.

Conclusions:

• The developed observer-based fault tolerant tracking control strategy is effective for linear multiagent systems.
• The proposed method demonstrates robustness against multiple faults and mismatched disturbances.
• Simulation results for an aircraft system validate the protocol's effectiveness.