This paper presents a robust adaptive fault-tolerant control (FTC) strategy for the path-following maneuvering of a high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formation system. The designation integrates an actuator gain-adaptive mechanism which is capable of compensating partial loss of effectiveness and bias faults, with a cascaded event-triggered mechanism (ETM) that regulates both control-command updates and adaptation loops. To handle strong coupling and modeling uncertainties in the UAV dynamics, unknown nonlinear terms are approximated using a fuzzy logic system (FLS), and dynamic surface control (DSC) is employed to avoid differential explosion. A boundary-regulated intermediate control term further enhances robustness against time-varying gains. The cascaded ETM reduces communication and computation by enforcing update thresholds on control inputs and parameter-update signals. Lyapunov analysis establishes semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of all closed-loop signals. Comparative simulations indicate improved tracking accuracy and reduced channel load relative to representative baselines.
Zhao et al. (2026) studied this question.