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This article proposes a distributed fixed-time fault-tolerant control methodology for networked six-degree-of-freedom fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) whose models are subjected to actuator faults and saturation. Two fixed-time antisaturation control strategies are developed for velocity and attitude channels. Notably, the adverse effects of actuator faults (e.g., lock-in-place and loss of effectiveness) and actuator saturation can be effectively compensated for by means of a new adaptive-gain-based design. This feature differs significantly from most of the existing fault-tolerant control schemes. A fixed-time-based sliding-mode surface is delicately embedded in the control design in order to provide the attitude channel with the fixed-time tracking property. Model uncertainties and external disturbances can be effectively handled by using a bound estimation method and smooth functions. On the basis of Lyapunov stability theory, the closed-loop system is shown to be stable in the sense of the fixed-time concept. Actuator saturations are rigorously enforced, and the tracking errors of velocity and attitude converge to a residual set around the origin within a fixed time in spite of model uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults. Numerical examples are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical findings.
Lv et al. (Mon,) studied this question.