Prescribed-Time Fault-Tolerant Containment Control of Fully Actuated Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems Without Estimations of Fault Parameters

This paper studies practical prescribed-time control of fully actuated heterogeneous multiagent systems subjected to actuator faults. A new observer-based containment control structure is given in the scenario that only a small number of followers can access the knowledge of leaders. Firstly, prescribed-time distributed input, velocity, and position observers are designed to estimate the information of the convex hull that leaders have spanned. Then, the original practical prescribed-time fault-tolerant control issue is transformed into one with a deferred constraint on tracking errors by introducing a time-varying constraining function, and decentralized tracking controllers are designed based on the system’s fully actuated system model. With the prescribed-time prescribed performance function, the proposed method allows for the advance determination of the settling time and the final tracking accuracy as needed, as well as the reduction of the impact of actuator faults on the system without the need for actuator fault parameter estimations. The efficacy of the suggested approach is shown through simulation results. Note to Practitioners—The containment control issue of heterogeneous multiagent systems, as a popular topic in the control field, is crucial to practical engineering. It is worth noting that actuator faults often exist and they have the potential to spread throughout networks in practical applications. A novel observer-based containment control structure is developed and a robust fault-tolerant control algorithm is given to reduce the impact of actuator faults on the system without the need for actuator fault parameter estimations. What’s more, achieving containment control in a brief amount of time is highly desirable. Therefore, a practical prescribed-time control protocol is given to ensure containment errors converge to the predefined region within an assignable prescribed settling time interval. In summary, a practical prescribed-time fault-tolerant containment control technique is proposed, which promotes the advancement of containment control for MASs in practical applications.