Fixed‐Time Fault‐Tolerant Formation Control for Uncertain Nonlinear Multi‐USVs With Actuator Failures

The fixed‐time fault‐tolerant formation control (FTFC) issue is investigated for nonlinear multi‐USVs considering unknown dynamics, external disturbances, and time‐varying actuator failures. To further mitigate the burden on the channel, a nonmonitoring adaptive periodic event‐triggered quantized (NM‐APETQ) mechanism is devised, in which the quantized trigger time can be adjusted adaptively. Then, by using adaptive control technology, an adaptive fault‐tolerant control protocol is proposed to compensate for the external disturbances and time‐varying actuator failures automatically, greatly reducing the online computational burden of the controller. Furthermore, with the aid of fixed‐time stability theory, neural networks, and adaptive control techniques, a distributed fixed‐time adaptive FTFC method is developed, enabling fast fixed‐time convergence. Eventually, the effectiveness of the presented approach for multi‐USV systems was verified by theoretical analysis and simulation.