Time-varying formation tracking for multi-agent systems with maneuvering leader under DDoS attacks and actuator faults

Time-varying formation tracking problems for multi-agent systems (MASs) under distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and actuator faults are studied. To deal with the hybrid threats at the cyber and physical layers, an estimator-based fault-tolerant hierarchical control scheme is introduced, which is applicable to channel-wise asynchronous communication. Sufficient conditions for formation tracking of maneuvering leader with ultimately bounded error are obtained, and the particular case of periodic communication and attacks with constrained duration and frequency is further analyzed. Comparative physical simulations based on ROS and Gazebo are first conducted to show the resilience of our scheme against the threats. Finally, an experimental platform containing DJI Tello quadrotors and a self-developed ground control station is built, based on which practical experiments with four quadrotors are carried out to evaluate the effectiveness and engineering practicability of the proposed control framework.