Fault-tolerant Consensus of Leader-following Multi-agent Systems Based on Distributed Fault Estimation Observer

This paper is concerned with the fault-tolerant consensus control problem for leader-following multi-agent systems with actuator faults and external disturbance. Firstly, by employing the relative output estimation errors with respect to the corresponding neighbours and the leader, a distributed fault estimation observer is constructed for each follower and the established global estimation error system is proven to be asymptotically stable. Secondly, based on the obtained fault estimation, the active fault-tolerant consensus control protocol for each follower is proposed with the utilization of the relative output measurements rather than the state of the systems. Under this control protocol, the actuator faults can be compensated and the influence of disturbance can be eliminated as well. Moreover, it is worth noticing that the process of designing the fault estimation observer and the fault-tolerant controller is separated and their performances are considered simultaneously to simplify the design procedures. Finally, an illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the obtained results.