Leader-Following Fault-Tolerant Consensus Control for Multi-Agent Systems Based on Observers

Area of Science:

• Control Systems Engineering
• Robotics
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Multi-agent systems (MASs) require robust control strategies for reliable operation.
• Fault tolerance is crucial in MASs to maintain performance under component failures.
• Leader-follower structures are common in MASs, necessitating effective inter-agent communication and state estimation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel fault-tolerant consensus control mechanism for leader-follower MASs.
• To enable follower agents to accurately estimate their states and the leader's state, even in the presence of unknown inputs and faults.
• To achieve consensus in MASs under fault conditions using a distributed estimation and centralized control approach.

Main Methods:

• Design of an unknown input observer (UIO) for each follower agent to achieve asymptotic state estimation.
• Development of a fault reconstruction (FR) method using an interval observer for sensor measurements.
• Creation of a distributed observer (DO) for followers to obtain leader state estimations.
• Design of a centralized controller utilizing individual state estimations, fault reconstruction, and leader state estimations from the DO.

Main Results:

• The proposed distributed information estimation and centralized control scheme effectively achieves fault-tolerant consensus.
• The developed DO-based distributed fault-tolerant control protocol ensures MAS consensus is reachable.
• Simulation examples demonstrate the practical effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control strategy.

Conclusions:

• The novel fault-tolerant consensus control mechanism provides a reliable solution for leader-follower MASs.
• The integration of UIO, FR, and DO enables robust state estimation and control under fault conditions.
• The proposed method enhances the stability and performance of multi-agent systems in the presence of uncertainties and faults.