Fault-Tolerant Formation Control of Multi-UAVs Using Prescribed Funnel and Relative Position Measurement

Mengna Li; Ziquan Yu; Zhongyu Yang; Youmin Zhang

doi:10.1109/JAS.2024.124623

Volume 13 Issue 8

Aug. 2026

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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Article Navigation > IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica > 2026 > 13(8): 1804-1815

M. Li, Z. Yu, Z. Yang, and Y. Zhang, “Fault-tolerant formation control of multi-UAVs using prescribed funnel and relative position measurement,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 1804–1815, Aug. 2026. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2024.124623

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M. Li, Z. Yu, Z. Yang, and Y. Zhang, “Fault-tolerant formation control of multi-UAVs using prescribed funnel and relative position measurement,” IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 1804–1815, Aug. 2026. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2024.124623

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Fault-Tolerant Formation Control of Multi-UAVs Using Prescribed Funnel and Relative Position Measurement

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2024.124623

Funds: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62373188, 62003162, 61833013), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (BK20200416, BK20222012), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020TQ0151, 2020M681590), the Industry-University Research Innovation Foundation for the Chinese Ministry of Education (2021ZYA02005), the Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (20220007052003, 20200007018001), and the Science and Technology on Space Intelligent Control Laboratory (HTKJ2022KL502015)

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Author Bio:
Mengna Li received the B.S. degree in internet of things engineering and the M.S. degree in control science and engineering from Xi’an University of Technology, in 2019 and 2022, respectively. She is currently a Ph.D. degree candidate in control science and engineering at the College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Her research interests include fault-tolerant control and resilient control of unmanned systems, and computer vision

Ziquan Yu (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2019. From 2017 to 2019, he was a Joint Ph.D. Student supported by the China Scholarship Council with the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering, Concordia University, Canada. He is currently with the College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His current research interests include fault-tolerant cooperative control of safety-critical systems, and guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned aerial vehicles

Zhongyu Yang received the M.S. degree in electronic information from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2024. He is now an Engineer with AVIC China Helicopter Research and Development Institute. His research interests include fault-tolerant cooperative control of unmanned aerial vehicles, and fault detection and diagnosis

Youmin Zhang (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 1983, 1986, and 1995, respectively, all in automatic control. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering and the Concordia Institute of Aerospace Design and Innovation, Concordia University, Canada. His current research interests include guidance, navigation, and control (GNC); fault detection and diagnosis (FDD); fault-tolerant control (FTC); and remote sensing with applications to unmanned aerial/space/ground/marine vehicles, smart grids, smart cities, and cyber-physical systems (CPS). Dr. Zhang has authored ten books and more than 600 journal and conference papers with high citations. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering (CSME), and a Member of the Technical Committee for several scientific societies. He has served as Honorary General Chair, General Chair, Program Chair, and an International Program Committee (IPC) member of several autonomous/ unmanned systems, renewable energies, and smart cities relevant international conferences. He was the President of the International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems (ISIUS) from 2019 to 2022. He is an (Advisory) Editorial Board Member, a Deputy Editor-in-Chief, and an Editor/Associate Editor of several international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Guidance, Navigation and Control, Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, Drone Systems and Applications, Unmanned Systems, and Security and Safety, etc
Corresponding author: Youmin Zhang, e-mail: youmin.zhang@concordia.ca
Received Date: 2024-04-02
Accepted Date: 2024-06-03

Abstract

Abstract

This paper studies a fault-tolerant formation control (FTFC) scheme for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs) without inter-agent communication under input saturation, actuator faults, and disturbances. Firstly, according to the obtained relative position measurement in the absence of inter-agent communication, a fixed-time differentiator is designed to achieve the estimate of the unknown relative velocity error signal. Then, the formation tracking error with a prescribed performance funnel is artfully constructed to realize the predetermined transient and steady-state requirements. Finally, the lumped disturbances triggered by actuator saturation, faults, and disturbances are compensated through utilizing immersion and invariance (I&I) adaptive control technique. Moreover, an auxiliary system was constructed to handle input saturation. Lyapunov stability analysis proves that even in the event of the formation team encountering actuator saturation, faults, and disturbances, the formation tracking control with the prescribed performance can be realized. Comparative simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
- Actuator faults,
- fault-tolerant formation control (FTFC),
- input saturation,
- prescribed performance funnel,
- relative postion measurement,
- unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

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References

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Fault-Tolerant Formation Control of Multi-UAVs Using Prescribed Funnel and Relative Position Measurement

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2024.124623

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