Fuzzy fault-tolerant containment control for multi-agent systems with unknown nonlinear dynamics

This paper studies the containment control problem for a class of nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) with actuator faults (AFs) and external disturbance under switching communication topologies. To address this problem, a new fuzzy fault-tolerant containment control method is developed via utilizing adaptive mechanisms. Furthermore, a sufficient condition is obtained to guarantee the stability of the considered closed-loop system by the dwell time technique combined with Lyapunov stability theory. Unlike the traditional method to estimate the weight matrix, the fuzzy logic system is used to estimate the norm of weight vectors. Thus, the difficulty that the unknown nonlinear function cannot be compensated for when the actuator produces outage or stuck fault is solved. Compared with the existing controllers for nonlinear MASs, the proposed controller is more suitable for the considered problem under the influence of AFs that are detrimental to the operation of each agent system. Besides which, the closed-loop system is proven to be stable by using the developed controller, and all followers converge asymptotically to the convex hull formed by the leaders. Finally, an example based on a reduced-order aircraft model is presented to verify the effectiveness of the designed control scheme.