Event-Triggered Fault-Tolerant Formation Tracking Control of Networked UAVs Subject to Compound Uncertainties

This paper addresses the fault-tolerant and robust formation control of networked unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to limited communication resources and unknown disturbances. A neural network-based sliding-mode disturbance observer ( \(\text {N}^2\) SMDO) is developed to provide accurate estimation and compensation of the composite uncertainties that encompass external disturbances, unknown nonlinear dynamics, and actuator faults. To alleviate the communication burden, an adaptive formation controller operating under an event-triggered mechanism is further proposed, ensuring that each UAV can establish and maintain the desired formation using only local, non-continuous information exchange while tracking the virtual leader’s trajectory. Finally, some simulation results validated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.