This book focuses on the fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs). It provides systematic and comprehensive descriptions of FTCC issues in multi-UAVs concerning faults, external disturbances, strongly unknown nonlinearities, and input saturation. Further, it addresses FTCC design from longitudinal motions to attitude motions, and outer-loop position motions of multi-UAVs. The book’s detailed control schemes can be used to enhance the flight safety of multi-UAVs. As such, the book offers readers an in-depth understanding of UAV safety in cooperative/formation flight and corresponding design methods. The FTCC methods presented here can also provide guidelines for engineers to improve the safety of aerospace engineering systems. The book offers a valuable asset for scientists and researchers, aerospace engineers, control engineers, lecturers and teachers, and graduates and undergraduates in the system and control community, especially those working in the field of UAV cooperation and multi-agent systems.

Time-Critical Cooperative Control of Autonomous Air Vehicles presents, in an easy-to-read style, the latest research conducted in the industry, while also introducing a set of novel ideas that illuminate a new approach to problem-solving. The book is virtually self-contained, giving the reader a complete, integrated presentation of the different concepts, mathematical tools, and control solutions needed to tackle and solve a number of problems concerning time-critical cooperative control of UAVs. By including case studies of fixed-wing and multirotor UAVs, the book effectively broadens the scope of application of the methodologies developed. This theoretical presentation is complemented with the results of flight tests with real UAVs, and is an ideal reference for researchers and practitioners from academia, research labs, commercial companies, government workers, and those in the international aerospace industry. - Addresses important topics related to time-critical cooperative control of UAVs - Describes solutions to the problems rooted in solid dynamical systems theory - Applies the solutions developed to fixed-wing and multirotor UAVs - Includes the results of field tests with both classes of UAVs

The monograph explores the safety of unmanned flight vehicles via the corresponding fault-tolerant control design methods. The authors analyse the safety control issues of unmanned flight vehicles, which include finite-time recovery against faults, concurrence of actuator faults and sensor faults, concurrence of actuator faults and wind effects, and faults encountered by a portion of unmanned flight vehicles in a distributed communication network. In addition, the commonly used simple but effective proportional-integral-derivative structure is also incorporated into the safety control design for unmanned flight vehicles. By using the fractional-order calculus, the developed safety control results are able to ensure flight safety and achieve the refined performance adjustments against faults and wind effects. The book will be of interest to 3rd/4th year undergraduate students, postgraduate and graduate students, researchers, academic staff, engineers of aircraft and unmanned flight vehicles.

1. Introduction. 1.1. Unmanned aerial systems. 1.2. Cooperative control. 1.3. Contingencies -- 2. Health management for the individual vehicle : a review. 2.1. Passive and active fault-tolerant control systems. 2.2. Fault/failure detection and diagnosis. 2.3. Control reconfiguration. 2.4. FTC and FDD techniques for MAV and SUAV -- 3. Health monitoring and adaptation for UAS formations. 3.1. Models of vehicle dynamics, flight control, and faults. 3.2. Formation control. 3.3. Observer-based decentralized abrupt fault detector. 3.4. Signal-based decentralized non-abrupt fault detector. 3.5. UAV command adaptation. 3.6. Simulations and experiments -- 4. Decision making and health management for cooperating UAS. 4.1. Coordinated rendezvous of UAS formations. 4.2. Cooperation despite information flow faults. 4.3. Numerical simulations. 4.4. Distributed and parallel implementation of optimization algorithms

This book is based on the authors’ recent research results on formation control problems, including time-varying formation, communication delays, fault-tolerant formation for multiple UAV systems with highly nonlinear and coupled, parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances. Differentiating from existing works, this book presents a robust optimal formation approach to designing distributed cooperative control laws for a group of UAVs, based on the linear quadratic regulator control method and the robust compensation theory. The proposed control method is composed of two parts: the nominal part to achieve desired tracking performance and the robust compensation part to restrain the influence of highly nonlinear and strongly coupled parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances on the global closed-loop control system. Furthermore, this book gives proof of their robust properties. The influence of communication delays and actuator fault tolerance can be restrained by the proposed robust formation control protocol, and the formation tracking errors can converge into a neighborhood of the origin bounded by a given constant in a finite time. Moreover, the book provides details about the practical application of the proposed method to design formation control systems for multiple quadrotors and tail-sitters. Additional features include a robust control method that is proposed to address the formation control problem for UAVs and theoretical and experimental research for the cooperative flight of the quadrotor UAV group and the tail-sitter UAV group. Robust Formation Control for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is suitable for graduate students, researchers, and engineers in the system and control community, especially those engaged in the areas of robust control, UAV swarming, and multi-agent systems.

This book features the latest theoretical results and techniques in the field of guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of vehicles and aircrafts. It covers a wide range of topics, including but not limited to, intelligent computing communication and control; new methods of navigation, estimation and tracking; control of multiple moving objects; manned and autonomous unmanned systems; guidance, navigation and control of miniature aircraft; and sensor systems for guidance, navigation and control etc. Presenting recent advances in the form of illustrations, tables, and text, it also provides detailed information of a number of the studies, to offer readers insights for their own research. In addition, the book addresses fundamental concepts and studies in the development of GNC, making it a valuable resource for both beginners and researchers wanting to further their understanding of guidance, navigation, and control.

This book includes original, peer-reviewed research papers from the 2021 5th Chinese Conference on Swarm Intelligence and Cooperative Control (CCSICC2021), held in Shenzhen, China on January 19-22, 2022. The topics covered include but are not limited to: reviews and discussions of swarm intelligence, basic theories on swarm intelligence, swarm communication and networking, swarm perception, awareness and location, swarm decision and planning, cooperative control, cooperative guidance, swarm simulation and assessment. The papers showcased here share the latest findings on theories, algorithms and applications in swarm intelligence and cooperative control, making the book a valuable asset for researchers, engineers, and university students alike.

“Fault Detection and Isolation: Multi-Vehicle Unmanned System” deals with the design and development of fault detection and isolation algorithms for unmanned vehicles such as spacecraft, aerial drones and other related vehicles. Addressing fault detection and isolation is a key step towards designing autonomous, fault-tolerant cooperative control of networks of unmanned systems. This book proposes a solution based on a geometric approach, and presents new theoretical findings for fault detection and isolation in Markovian jump systems. Also discussed are the effects of large environmental disturbances, as well as communication channels, on unmanned systems. The book proposes novel solutions to difficulties like robustness issues, as well as communication channel anomalies. “Fault Detection and Isolation: Multi-Vehicle Unmanned System” is an ideal book for researchers and engineers working in the fields of fault detection, as well as networks of unmanned vehicles.