VGESO-Based Finite-Time Fault-Tolerant Tracking Control for Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Based on the variable gain extended state observer, a finite-time fault-tolerant control strategy is developed for the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle with actuator faults and external disturbances. Firstly, a novel variable gain extended state observer is designed to estimate the unknown external disturbances, which mitigates the initial peaking phenomenon existing in traditional extended state observer-based methods. Meanwhile, the neural networks are applied to accurately approximate unknown couplings online. Moreover, with the help of the projection operator technique, the unknown actuator faults are observed in real time. Combined with the backstepping framework, the finite-time robust fault-tolerant control scheme is constructed and the stability is strictly proved via Lyapunov’s theory. Finally, the validity of the developed control scheme is demonstrated through numerical simulations.