A review on fault-tolerant cooperative control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper presents the recent developments in Fault-Tolerant Cooperative Control (FTCC) of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs). To facilitate the analyses of FTCC methods for multi-UAVs, the formation control strategies under fault-free flight conditions of multi-UAVs are first summarized and analyzed, including the leader-following, behavior-based, virtual structure, collision avoidance, algebraic graph-based, and close formation control methods, which are viewed as the cooperative control methods for multi-UAVs at the pre-fault stage. Then, by considering the various faults encountered by the multi-UAVs, the state-of-the-art developments on individual, leader-following, and distributed FTCC schemes for multi-UAVs are reviewed in detail. Finally, conclusions and challenging issues towards future developments are presented.