Robust Time-Varying Pinning Cooperative Control for Heterogeneous Air-Ground System with Switching Topologies and Uncertain Communication Links

In this paper, a special air-ground system consisting of multiple tail-sitters and ground vehicles are constructed under switching topologies and uncertain communication links. For the air-ground system, the ground vehicles serve as the take-off and landing platforms for the tail-sitters. A robust time-varying pinning coordinated controller is developed for the heterogeneous system. The effects of parameter/link uncertainties and external disturbances are effectively attenuated via the devised control law. The robust performance of the air-ground cooperative control system with switching topologies is rigorously validated with the Lyapunov stability criterion. The steady-state tracking deviations satisfy uniform ultimate boundedness and converge within an infinitesimal region around the origin. Simulation tests are carried out to verify that the developed control scheme achieves satisfactory coordination under time-varying cases, with tracking deviations noticeably lower in comparison with conventional control schemes.