This article focuses on the asymptotic time-varying consensus tracking for the mobile dual flexible manipulators with unknown gain faults, prescribed performances, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Our main contribution is to provide a novel distributed boundary control scheme for reaching the asymptotic consensus tracking of partial differential equation (PDE) coupled ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems under a heterogeneous linear leader. To this end, an adaptive distributed switched observer is first proposed to asymptotically observe the leader's signal, functioning effectively whether the network is under attack or not. Secondly, a servo system is introduced to generate the desired transverse displacement. Subsequently, the tracking errors of two angles and the moving positions of all agents can meet the prescribed transient performance requirements by utilizing barrier Lyapunov functions (BLFs) and finite-time performance functions (FTPFs). Moreover, adaptive radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs) are used to approximate unknown parameters, and the adaptive technique is employed to compensate for gain faults and compound disturbances. The asymptotic convergence results and prescribed control performances for closed-loop systems are demonstrated using Lyapunov stability theory, and the well-posed problem is addressed using the operator semi-group methodology. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed boundary control laws.

This study studies coordinated control of a platoon of vehicles consisting of a leader and multiple followers when multiple vehicles suffer from disturbances. Small disturbances acting on one vehicle may cause large spacing errors between intervehicles. In addition, the spacing errors propagate up or down in a vehicle platoon. To mitigate the adverse effect of the disturbances, a control law is proposed based on only the position information of the vehicle itself and its preceding vehicle. To analyse the disturbances propagation among the platoon, the upper bounds of two transfer functions are presented including the transfer function matrix 𝒢 _de from external disturbances to spacing errors as well as the transfer function matrix 𝒢 _ue from a leader's input control to spacing errors. Furthermore, an alternative control law is proposed when the velocity of the leader is known by the followers. In this case, two tighter upper bounds of 𝒢 ^l _de and 𝒢 ^l _ue are presented. The derived upper bounds of the transfer functions are independent of the number of vehicles in the platoon. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This article considers the third-order connected vehicle systems (CVSs) to implement cooperative formation control for autonomous vehicles. The error dynamics is modeled based on the proposed distributed control protocols for two large classes of general network topologies. The performance indices, such as stability, scalability, speedability, and string stability (4S) indices, are investigated. The necessary and sufficient conditions of stability for CVSs are derived and properties of characteristic roots are discussed. These roots are dependent on information of the given network topology. The sufficient conditions of stability, which are independent of network topology, are given by analyzing the range of eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix of the corresponding network topology, so scalability is guaranteed. To guarantee fast convergence speed, the upper boundary of stability margin is derived, which is also independent of the size of the network topology and can be conveniently tuned by the controller gains and model parameter. The necessary and sufficient conditions of stability are also achieved for the bidirectional-leader following (BLF) network topology. The conditions of string stability are further derived to ensure that spacing errors (caused by disturbances) decay along the vehicle platoon. Furthermore, combining the conditions of stability, speedability, and string stability, the CVSs are proven to be not only stable but also string stable and quickly convergent. Thus, the 4S indices can be guaranteed. Numerical simulations are provided to validate the theoretical results.

This paper studies the robust formation flying problem for a swarm of drones, which are modeled as uncertain second order systems. By making use of minimal virtual leader information, a fully distributed robust control scheme is proposed, which includes three parts. First, the output based adaptive distributed observer is adopted to recover the global flying path vector as well as the coefficients of the minimal polynomial of the system matrix of the virtual leader system for each drone based on neighboring information from the communication network. Second, based on the estimated minimal polynomial of the system matrix of the virtual leader system, an asymptotic internal model is conceived to deal with uncertain system parameters. Third, by combining the asymptotic internal model and a certainty equivalent dynamic state feedback control law, a local trajectory tracking controller is synthesized to solve the robust formation flying problem. Numerical simulations are provided to validate the proposed control scheme.

This study puts forward a hybrid backstepping‐boundary iterative learning control (B‐BILC) to tackle vibration problem for an Euler–Bernoulli beam system subjected to an unknown external disturbance. Based on Lyapunov's synthesis method, a backstepping term and an iterative term are designed to reduce the vibration and attenuate the effects of the unknown boundary disturbance under the consideration of model property. With the proposed B‐BILC scheme, the uniform boundedness of the closed‐loop system state and the convergence of the system output are proved via Lyapunov theory. Simulations are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and demonstrate that B‐BILC yields better performance compared to the Proportion–Derivative‐BILC (PD‐BILC).