Finite-Time Fault-Tolerant Tracking Control for an Air Cushion Vehicle Subject to Actuator Faults

This paper proposes a finite-time fault-tolerant tracking controller for an air cushion vehicle (ACV) based on the backstepping method. A four-degree-of-freedom ACV with model uncertainties is considered, where the unknown nonlinearities can be approximated by radial basis function neural networks. By combining the command filter with the backstepping method, the calculation of virtual control derivatives is avoided. The proposed adaptive finite-time fault-tolerant controller can estimate the unknown boundaries of actuator fault parameters so that an unbounded number of actuator faults can be processed. The proposed theory ensures that the stability of the system and its tracking performance can be guaranteed in a finite time. This paper focuses on simulation-based work. Simulation results confirm the capability of the proposed trajectory tracking control scheme.