Distributed Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control for Leaderless/Leader–Follower Multi-Agent Systems against Actuator and Sensor Faults

The faults of actuators and sensors can lead to abnormal operations or even system faults in multi-agent systems (MASs). To address this issue, this paper proposes an adaptive fault-tolerant control (FTC) algorithm for leaderless/leader–follower MASs against actuator and sensor faults. First, extended states integrating the fault components are constructed and the MAS is transformed into a descriptor system form. Then, a sliding-mode observer is designed for the transformed MAS. Based on the estimated MAS states and faults, adaptive FTC algorithms are developed, which update the control gains with the distributed tracking error. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed method can guarantee MAS stability against actuator and sensor faults.