Fault-tolerant output synchronisation control of multi-vehicle systems

This study presents a fault-tolerant output synchronisation control approach for a class of non-linear multi-vehicle systems. Firstly, adaptive fault diagnosis observers are designed for vehicle systems by utilising local measurements. Adaptive thresholds for distributed fault-detection of each vehicle system are derived. Then an adaptive fault estimation algorithm is proposed. Using the online obtained fault information, an adaptive fault-tolerant control protocol is designed to ensure the output synchronisation of the networked vehicle systems. It is proved that the proposed active fault-tolerant control protocol is capable of maintaining the output synchronisation performance of the multi-vehicle systems, at an acceptable level, in the presence of faults. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.