Fixed‐Time State Observer‐Based Robust Adaptive Neural Fault‐Tolerant Control for a Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

ABSTRACT This paper presents a fixed‐time state observer‐based robust adaptive neural fault‐tolerant control (RANFTC) for attitude and altitude tracking and control of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), considering multiple actuator faults, parametric uncertainty, and unknown external disturbances simultaneously. A novel fixed‐time state error estimation based on sliding mode observer is designed, which is independent of initial conditions. A proportional–integral–derivative (PID) based sliding mode control (SMC) is proposed to handle actuator faults and unknown disturbances in combination with the fixed‐time observer within the fault‐tolerant control (FTC) design scheme. The radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is employed with the controller to approximate the uncertain parameters of the system. Furthermore, two new adaptive laws are designed to estimate the sudden actuator fault and the unknown upper bound of disturbances independently. Implementing these estimation schemes avoids overestimation, enhances the robustness of the presented controller, and substantially eliminates the control chattering problem. By applying the Lyapunov stability concept, the suggested control strategy guarantees that the states of the quadrotor UAV converge to the origin in a finite time. Finally, simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate the tracking performance and highlight the effectiveness of the proposed FTC design compared to the existing FTC methods.