Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Time-Varying Formation Control of Unmanned Airships With Limited Communication Ranges Against Input Saturation for Smart City Observation

This article investigates the distributed fault-tolerant time-varying formation control problem for multiple unmanned airships (UAs) against limited communication ranges and input saturation to achieve the safe observation of a smart city. To address the strongly nonlinear functions caused by the time-varying formation flight with limited communication ranges and bias faults, intelligent adaptive learning mechanisms are proposed by incorporating fuzzy neural networks. Moreover, Nussbaum functions are introduced to handle the input saturation and loss-of-effectiveness faults. The distinct features of the proposed control scheme are that time-varying formation flight, actuator faults including bias and loss-of-effectiveness faults, limited communication ranges, and input saturation are simultaneously considered. It is proven by Lyapunov stability analysis that all UAs can achieve a safe formation flight for the smart city observation even in the presence of actuator faults. Hardware-in-the-loop experiments with open-source Pixhawk autopilots are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.