Distributed Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control for Multiple UAVs with Prescribed Performance

In this paper, the super-twisting sliding mode-based distributed adaptive fault-tolerant attitude tracking control strategy is proposed for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with prescribed performance. For each follower UAV in the formation team, a distributed sliding-mode observer is first created to estimate the reference. The disturbance observer is then designed to observe for uncertainties and actuator faults. The neural networks are further utilized to identify the disturbance observer error. Moreover, prescribed performance functions are used to constrain the tracking errors with respect to the estimated references from the distributed sliding-mode observer. Furthermore, adaptive super-twisting sliding mode mechanism is utilized to facilitate the fault-tolerant control design. It is demonstrated that all UAVs can track the desired reference using the Lyapunov method, and that the prescribed performance constraints contain and limit the tracking errors. Finally, simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.