In this paper, for leader–follower structure multi-agent systems (MASs), a new fault-tolerant consensus control mechanism which is called the distributed information estimation and centralized control scheme is developed. To begin with, for each follower agent, an unknown input observer (UIO) is designed to obtain the asymptotic convergence state estimation. Then, a fault reconstruction (FR) method is proposed through constructing an interval observer by sensor measurement output. Most importantly, using the leader’s state estimation provided by the local observer, a distributed observer (DO) is designed so that each follower can obtain the leader’s state estimation. Subsequently, for each follower agent, by using its own state estimation and FR, and the leader’s state estimation offered by the DO, a centralized controller is designed. In this way, a DO-based distributed fault-tolerant control protocol is developed, in which the distributed feature is majorly reflected by the DO construction, resulting in the controller being formulated in a centralized way. In addition, under the DO-based distributed fault-tolerant control protocol, MAS consensus can be reached. Finally, two simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Liu et al. (Sat,) studied this question.