Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control for Multiagent Systems via Virtual-Actuator-Based Reconfiguration

This article aims to develop a virtual-actuator-based control scheme for the consensus tracking problem of multiagent systems (MASs) against actuator faults and mismatched disturbances. The proposed scheme has a double-layer structure. In the cyber layer, the nominal controller is designed with neighboring information for the fault-free case. While in the physical layer, the fault compensator, working as the virtual actuator, is applied to reconfigure faulty plants adaptively. This design enjoys the advantages that the nominal controller needs no adjustment and all its properties can be preserved after failure. Moreover, the proposed control scheme is distinguished by the following features: 1) the commonly imposed rank condition on outage faults is removed; 2) the norm bound of the leader's input is allowed to be unknown even though the topologies are switching and directed; and 3) there is no need to use the estimates of faults in the virtual actuator design, which means the negative impacts caused by the inaccurate fault estimation can be avoided. Finally, a numerical example is given to validate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.