Distributed Cooperative Control of Multiple UAVs in the Presence of Actuator Faults and Input Constraints

A distributed cooperative control algorithm of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with directed topology is investigated in this brief. To overcome the actuator faults and external disturbance, incremental sliding mode formation controller is developed to realize the distributed coordination of the UAVs system, where an adaptive mechanism is utilized to deal with the chattering problem. Moreover, to reduce the adverse influence of input saturation, an auxiliary system is introduced to regulate the control signals. It is shown by Lyapunov method that the stability of the proposed algorithm can be guaranteed. A numerical example is given to illustrate that all follower UAVs can track the leader UAV.